


Vampiric Victimology

by CampionSayn



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman Beyond, Batman: The Animated Series, DCU
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Het/Femslash/slash, Incest by Proxy, M/M, Multi, Sibling Incest, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cases are long and hard. But how they work on people, especially undead people, is even more difficult. An epic, Gothic AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rose Midnight Moonlight Blak](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Rose+Midnight+Moonlight+Blak).



_-:-_  
Go down the garden singing,  
Silencing all the petals  
And setting the valleys ringing.  
-Manor House.

* * *

_{One week before a morning in the mist, at the gates of sacred ground…}_  
  
 _A double set of hands in the dark intersect and maneuver among each other. One pair strong and tanned, with little nicks on every finger engraved there like tattoos; holding a large Dung needle with some sort of thread like the umbilical cord of a barn animal, still bloodied and careful to weave it through the soft, but wet fat and skin of a pair of dead deer the dainty hands of chalk white had carved up for the occasion._  
  
The lady hands of white, with black fingernails that were not the product of polish bought from a market, pinched together the skin over the middle of the two bodies held inside of the sack the controllers of the hands had set about making.  
  
Dusted blue eyes—of smoke and plotting and concealment of horrors that would send normal beings weeping or baring teeth like an animal of the wilderness—held onto the sight of the bodies for as long as possible. Aside from the very dead, very cold man and woman in this coffin of flesh made from two sinners— **and the masculine of the two sewers and weavers did understand that they were indeed sinners, for what else could they call themselves when not even the writers of the papers could give them any title?—** there was cotton plucked from trees shedding down for birds, scented and sweet, and there were many kinds of flora that he did not know the name of. Let the police behold both sickness and beauty, as his partner oft said. Let them behold minor compassion before they discovered that the woman of the dead had no tongue and the dead man had no stomach.

* * *

The meeting he was supposed to go to for his so-called trauma was happening now, as he skimmed his fingers like spider’s legs over the keys of his type writer. Damian was at his meeting at the moment, forced to go by Helena.   
  
Such was the way things were these days.   
  
One week, Helena—feline Jinniyah extraordinaire, and queen of all things known and unknown and of course, the boys’ only biological sister—would make Damian go to his meeting with the rape victims of Tallant Al Ghul, a high level vampire that had seen thirty decades and until three years ago, despite Talia and Ra’s coaxing, had never hurt anyone except mentally; where he would spout off what had been going on in his life since three years ago when his wretched twin brother attacked him with his clown bitch watching from the sidelines and marked his back when Tallant (the scourge of Damian’s existence) was done with him.  
  
 It was a small group of four that included—for Damian’s group, anyway—Tamara Fox (a gorgeous black wolf shape changer that had been wandering through the park when Tallant’s partner had jumped her and dragged her under a nearby bridge for Tallant to have his way with her), a British woman named Beryl who was a Summer fairy (Tallant had torn her clitoris and his partner had torn both of her dusty yellow wings in half) and, horror of horrors, Damian’s uncle Dusan (a real albino vampire from some long forgotten empire of the sands) that had been the second victim, whom was half blinded. Amazing, really, how the second son of Talia Al Ghul acted so polished and sweet with whomever his mother and grandfather felt worthy of associating themselves with, but once they lost their usefulness, he acted just as cold and bitter—with much more evil in the fact that he acted so soft while doing it.  
  
Those meetings were hard for Damian, especially since he was Tallant’s very first victim—Terry should know; Tallant had attacked both Damian and Dusan the same night, but when Terry went to see them both in the same hospital, the knife wound that both he and Dusan had at equal depth and length had mostly healed on Damian and Dusan’s was still fresh and spurting his (and Damian’s similar) vampire blood all over his pale white robes he had thrown on in a hurry.  
  
Terry tended to avoid Helena like the sunlight in summer time when it was his turn to go to meetings. Don’t get him wrong, he knew that, according to statistics that Helena herself had pulled out of thin air before his eyes that had many details inscribed into them by the vampire boys’ father, therapy, over long periods of time with people that had gone through the same thing as him was supposed to help. However, it didn’t feel right that he was the only vampire among the rest of his fellow victims.  
  
His group, as it were, was raped by Tallant’s partner Delia—a demon, not a vampire, that had claws of black midnight and a polished, chalk white complexion and as an added smear was notorious in underground royalty in her own right, like Tallant, which made them disgustingly equal—had taken her victims in open spaces where people could have helped them if only Tallant hadn’t caused something to happen that kept anyone from hearing the cries for help.  
  
Delia had taken Ghoul (an undead that looked rather attractive, even with his grey skin, permanent bags under his eyes and a lot of scarring from being stuck with Tallant’s favorite sword) in a playground and used the chains from a set of swings to choke him. He still hadn’t, in the three years of therapy, been able to divulge in just how he had been penetrated. The clown looking bitch had almost drowned Melanie (a sweet snow leopard that had to have her tail bobbed after breaks and tears Tallant had administered to it after Delia was done) at the beach in the wee hours of three in the morning. Deidre (Delia’s identical twin, save for being a mere immortal with hyena spots all along her back and only pale, instead of chalk white) and Terry had both been in the same district of empty apartments, raped an hour apart and neither of them knew who was her first victim; Deidre, because she had been pregnant and had miscarried and the doctors had been more concerned with saving her from blood loss than saving evidence and Terry because he had refused to go to the hospital until a night had passed because his father and Dick had made him go with Damian making sure the younger vampire didn’t jump out of a window. Tallant had stabbed them both just above the pelvic bone. Both the blonde and the brunette commented, in group, that they had been stabbed from behind and saw the blade go through them like a sewing pin through a teddy bear and felt the pearl decorated, cold hilt touch their skin.  
  
It wouldn’t be so bad, except Terry tried to spend all of his free time catching the two creatures that had made all of these people so screwed up. They had stopped allowing people to live after these groups of people and settled for raping and then leaving bodies in the entry ways of graveyards all the way into Minsk, Belarus. Thereupon they had disappeared and stopped leaving tracks.  
  
Until _three weeks_ ago, when the bodies of ten year old Princess Perdita of Blatava and twelve year old Billy Batson of Faucet City had been found in a graveyard south of the swamps of New Orleans; they were together, sewn into what looked like a cocoon of cotton and deer stomach lining, with the tell tale signs of Tallant and Delia’s handiwork. Billy had been missing his stomach and Perdita had been missing her heart.  
  
Terry wouldn’t be able to sleep properly—in his coffin, nicely done up with Baby’s Breath and silk pillows despite his telling Alfred constantly that he wasn’t so fancy—until they were either preferably dead, or rotting underground in those special prisons they had started making since four hundred years ago and the supernatural among human beings had gone public.  
  
Turning to the watch hanging pathetically on his rather sickly wrist like the flower bracelets children made for their friends in primary school. His blue, camera and picture worthy eyes changed to the blazing yellow of some cats for a moment.  
  
‘ _Well,’_ he thought, adding on another paragraph to his report, ‘ _I’ve got another two hours until he gets back.’_

* * *

Buttoning his coat and tying his grey scarf around his neck—he couldn’t feel cold, but he was told that it made him look less like a blood sucker—Damian was the last person to leave the imposing, but simple white walls and pillars of the meeting place. The quiet Doctor Light—yes, she had repeatedly told the group that was her real name—had vanished in a flash and spark of a lightning bolt with no thunder to leave the place and go back to doing whatever it was that physics professors of the astral plane did.  
  
“Well, that was a waste of time,” he muttered darkly under his breath as he walked out the door with the three wide range and imposing staircases awaiting him out front…  
  
With his uncle standing outside at the first step going down, apparently waiting for the young man. Well, young for vampires.  
  
Damian would never admit it, breathe it aloud and give the thought form, but he was still, after three bloody years, trying to get used to one of Dusan’s eyes being a horrible, milky white color of a blind human, when the other was still red and bright as a lobster’s shell. It was twice as imposing and strange and made him flinch more noticeably than his father had made him react in a hundred years.  
  
The dark prince of Wayne bowed his head at the tall, somber chalk white man, walking up to him like he would have in the old days and walked almost beside him on the way down the stairs.  
  
“You spoke more than you have at all in the last couple of weeks at this meeting,” the albino remarked offhandedly, a start of a conversation not really the sort of thing he had ever been used to doing (not when before the incident of his rape he had bowed down to his father, Damian’s grandfather like Dusan himself was nothing; never speaking unless spoken or ordered to first) but that still made him a little better than Damian, “I was wondering why?”  
  
Damian said nothing at first, just looking from the stairs and occasionally at Dusan’s choice in wardrobe (Red sweater with arms like that of a Tibetan monk’s robes, silk white pants that could not be practical in winter if he were a human, shoes that looked like slippers for priests in the Sahara and a white overcoat that would keep out the cold if only he would button it up just once) and then finally at Dusan’s face.  
  
The left, moon similar eye looked blankly forward, unseeing as they continued at pace, heading down town for the Gotham Police station when Damian was due to meet up with his siblings for some food that wasn’t quite lunch, but not quite dinner, either. Although, saying that wasn’t quite right, as Helena did consider it dinner as she had gotten up with the eardrum breaking rooster that sat atop the manor, compliments of Selina and Alfred as a joke.  
  
“I’ve had a lot on my mind,” the vampire prince finally answered, the never not-present sound of superiority almost lacking when in the company of elder vampires such as Dusan, “And I thought that was what this therapy was for? An expensive form of whining with few results from that woman who makes watching paint dry seem like a joy.”  
  
Dusan gave a low chuckle, ducking an overhanging awning with little vine plants hanging from the two corners as they passed the flower shop that Damian went into once and a while to buy dying plants as a pretext to talk to Colin Wilkes, one of the employees.  
  
“Yes, well, I’m just glad to see my nephew trying to communicate with the world in other ways than with his fists. You’re at least doing better than young Terrence in that respect.”  
  
“Hey,” Damian shrugged, the both of them crossing a sidewalk with the sign on the other side blinking with the red hand when there were no cars in sight, “I’ve got a boyfriend. He’s still getting over that Asian princess that he dumped. I can’t entirely blame him for being so obsessed with the case; at least he gets paid over-time for it.”  
  
“Silver lining to a dark cloud.”

* * *

“You’re absolutely sure?”  
  
The office of Commissioner Barbara Gordon—a gorgeous, redheaded human with Greco oracle blood in her veins from her mother’s side of the family—sat at her chair, phone pressed to her ear and gripped like a vice; her fingers had gone white long ago, with little red spots forming at the ends of each finger.  
  
Outside her window, on the fire escape and with twin frowns that made them look so alike that it could become difficult to tell that they weren’t bodily related, stood Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson-Wayne. They had been speaking with Barbara all morning and out of earshot of Terry until Damian got back from therapy. Helena knew they were there, but certainly had not bothered to come up and say hello. She was still avoiding Bruce on account of a fight she, Selina and the King of the Night had a few weeks ago about the prospect of her possibly looking for a new line of work. She wouldn’t talk to Dick until Bruce was far away and then she could tackle her oldest brother properly.  
  
“Well, then,” Barbara sighed, her grip lessoned, but not all prone, her other hand tracing the lining of her eyes and the edges of her bangs, “I’ll send the detectives down there as soon as they are both available. Yes, thank you for the up-date, Maggie. Good-bye.”  
  
Dropping the phone back onto its cradle, Barbara merely blinked, just a second—less than a second—and both of the dark figures were before her desk, grim and tall and large as many lifetimes more than anyone like herself had ever or perhaps would ever see.  
  
Formalities would, as it were, be quite pointless and so she got right to the point.  
  
“A set of bodies were found in Gotham Cemetery today. Same signature as all the others. One male, one female, organs cut out surgically and by hand. They’re back.”  
  
Bruce breathed inwards, as did Dick, but his was full of consideration, while the younger vampire’s was full of fear for both of his younger siblings. Bruce never really let his emotions show among other beings—vampire or no—and Barbara, it seemed, even if she was loathe to admit it, was no exception to that rule. Dick gave her a sympathetic look as Bruce looked upon her again with cold stone blue eyes and spoke, cool and commanding.  
  
Although, really, it was more of a suggestion that came out as what would probably happen.  
  
“Damian should interview Terry’s therapy group. Terry would be too emotional towards them. And Terry, should interview Damian’s lot. Understanding among them might prove valuable.”  
  
Barbara raised a brow, sleek and all line, “After they look at the body downstairs in the autopsy, if it pleases your highness?”  
  
Bruce, despite indeed being royal as most aged vampires are—a single lifetime he had lived where he was not a Duke or a Magistrate of some kind had never come to pass and all of his sons made such perfect princes while his daughters did their best, even when not related to him by blood like Helena, to be the most exasperating princesses—always shuffled and bristled at being addressed to as someone’s better. He did so in that moment, clearing away his throat and giving Barbara not-quite-smile.  
  
“Only if it pleases you, Commissioner,” he hastened in reply, turning on his heel to remove himself from the room, nay the whole station house.  
  
He knew Dick would not follow directly after him—why should he when he enjoyed speaking with this brilliant oracle with flaming red hair and kind eyes; not being able to see her as often as his immortal self would like—and so he shut the door behind him with no bang and no real sound but the wood creaking as the knob clicked back into its place.  
  
A nice silence sat itself in the room for a moment, drawing out the time for a number lower than sixty in seconds and finally, Dick spoke up. It was always a nice change from listening to Bruce, sometimes.  
  
“How are my little brothers doing, Babs?”  
  
“They’re almost as big of a pain in the ass as your mother at charities for dogs,” the redhead replied, smirking and setting her head atop her hands like a nymphet and twice as beautiful to the blue tie wearing vampire before her, and she knew it, too, “Although, your sister keeps them in line more often than not. Better still when they clear cases and stop their shouting matches when they bet on who was going to go down in flames. Other than that, they’re fantastic.”

* * *

Neither of them are happy when they find themselves assigned to interview people for more clues later. People that they neither know personally, nor hear much about from the other—wouldn’t their family be just so much better if the two of them talked about things other than work?—and would have been happy never to have to, if only new bodies hadn’t turned up. A glorious sort of invitation from the enemy to pick up the game where they’d left off; something like tag or hide and seek in a perverted, sadistic and masochistic form.  
  
Both of the brunettes hate the smell of the morgue and Helena tagging along to collect notes is no help since she is wearing that “Thing of Beauty” perfume that makes them both gag terribly if they get too close to her. She does this often when Damian or Terry goes to therapy so that during work hours they don’t play fight and she can keep working—an act only she could find to be enjoyable. So much like her mother…  
  
Leslie Thompson stood waiting for them, hands holding up a saw and undoing the winding of that which held the sort-of cocoon thing together. Blood from the cocoon had splashed onto her middle where her lab coat protected her and her gloves were saturated with what smell to the siblings to be mud and something worse than swamp water. She paused in her movements to say hello and tell them, plainly, that they were just in time to meet the guests of honor.  
  
“I thought Detective Sawyer said that it was a man and woman?” Helena questioned, standing well back in a corner of the room. Like any feline, she hated to get dirty for any reason unless she were a tom and wanted to become more fragrant for the ladies. She was no tom and would not get closer unless she was piqued with interest.  
  
“Well,” the doctor started through grit teeth as the saw natted and chewed through the seal, “It had the same MO as the last ones and Miss Sawyer didn’t want to disturb the evidence inside. Barbara said herself that you two get first dibs—ah, there we go!”  
  
The thread of the otherworldly finally gave out and the entire cocoon opened wide, showing everything and leaving nothing to the imagination except for why these two people were targeted by such maniacs.  
  
An immediate recognition settled over the occupants of the room as they looked upon the faces of the two dead bodies. One was a beautiful, young Chinese woman with cracked glasses set on her nose on purpose, like a theme. It was a reminder that she was once alive, despite how pale and cold she was now, though her skin did not seem worse for wear other than dried blood on her lips; her eyes were open and looking over at the man.  
  
The man, as far as they all knew, had been famous and perhaps the eyes of the woman had been posed as some kind of joke on that. He was formerly, while alive, Black Mask. A man that all of the Waynes and Kyles knew at one time or another as one of the worst immortal crime bosses in Gotham; killer of three dozen organized rival crime affiliates and survivor of the plague in France two centuries ago.  
  
Now he was dead and had been nicely stitched up from his breast plate down to his pelvic bone. Wasn’t hard to guess what had been stolen from the black faced, skeleton looking dead man.  
  
“Why does it smell like flowers at the shop instead of rotting meat?” Damian asked, curious enough to walk up to the table, despite not wanting anything to slick off of the cocoon and onto his suit. Terry came closer as well, eyes looking inside and analyzing everything; neither of them were concerned as Helena started taking notes from her own, clean little corner.  
  
Leslie, for her part, started poking around inside, hands pulling out bits of cotton and some kind of flowers that Helena could identify and wrote down specifically as Arum Lily, Chinese Chrysanthemum and Speedwell. Every one of them must have been important in some way, but she wouldn’t know for sure until she looked them up after this meeting was through. It could be nothing or it could be everything.  
  
Thin but strong hands slowly raised the two dead from their bindings of the cocoon and onto the clean, steel tables. Black Mask was in a perhaps once white or beige suit now covered with his own blood and the woman laid to rest with him (Damian knew her name, he thought, to be Miss Li, Black Mask’s secretary and first lieutenant) was dressed in simple black business skirt and jacket.  
  
Dr. Thompson lightly traced Li’s jaw and flinched back for a moment before taking one of the little white plastic pieces from her surgical tray to hold Li’s jaw open; dark black blood drops leaked out of Li’s lips and onto the steel table.  
  
“It appears that her tongue was removed,” the doctor explained, tracing the inside of the woman’s throat, “All the way to just where her first set of tonsils branch out. Not surgical, but it seems that it was done after death, thank heavens. I can’t see anything else of value with her, I’m afraid.”  
  
“And Black Mask?” Terry asked, taking a breath through his mouth and not his nose. He might be a vampire, but even he could flinch from the decay of a body.  
  
Leslie went to work on the former crime boss; she unbuttoned his shirt and took her scalpel, cutting along the lining of the victim’s stitches.  
  
Once the cavity of his torso was laid wide open—a literal mouth of flesh and blood, open sores and perhaps a worse smell that an actual swamp—Dr. Thompson put her hands inside, touching around. After a moment, her eyes flashed with mild shock and she pulled out a laminated piece of paper like the kinds used for weddings in old Britain; a short sentence in cursive was displayed for any and all to read.  
  
Both of the boys made to take it, but Terry was faster and he read it aloud, never minding or noticing the icy glare from his brother. He only paid mind to the two different types of hand writing on the page, his thumb smudging away blood where it made the words more difficult to read.  
  
“ _The Lord and Lady are back in town, as you can plainly see by our invitation.  
  
_ _Wanna play?”_  
  
The brothers glanced at each other. One was noticeably angry, but that was not uncommon for Damian, so why should Terry be surprised at him being enraged now? Terry, for his part just had this mellow look. Or just blank; it sometimes became hard to tell.  
  
“Wanna play?” Terry repeated, a twitch forming at the edge of his mouth. It was contagious and spread to Damian; both smirked malevolently.  
  
“Yes,” was the echo.


	2. Appetite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> {…Don’t worry, he’s not dead. I’m just picking him up for your brother…}

_-:-  
You’re just an appetite. And if you stopped being greedy, you’d die.  
-Nine._

* * *

[ _Near Gotham Bay…]_  
  
“I still don’t see why we can’t talk to our own therapy group,” Terry stressed and harped for about the tenth time in that hour, driving the car—a really sweet ride for bloodsuckers; sort of looked like a small hearse that was all black with a red ‘V’ painted on the hood that looked like a bat--in almost a reckless manner before he would drop Damian off at Melanie Walker’s before Terry himself was off to see Miss Fox, “We know our group, we could talk to them on better terms.”  
  
“You know that’s not how it works, kid,” Damian grunted, leaning into his cushy leather seat with the scarf he wore untied and snugly resting between the lapels of his coat, “There’s no objectivity with interviewing our own crowd. Remember last year when that psycho Derek Powers got out on probation and got a bullet through the brain? You were more than willing to take every one of the suspects’—his own victims--word for where they were. That didn’t go over too well with Babs when Donny Grosso was the one who blew him away. Poor kid.”  
  
Terry bit into the lining of his lip. He was unable to draw blood like he would have liked—to calm his nerves of course, not just to drink it like some of the freaks downtown did—but the sharp pain kept him from spewing a hate-riddled retort at his older brother. He was right, of course—woe be it to anyone who would say Damian was right to his face, though—but that didn’t make it any less annoying as he turned another deserted corner of an alleyway onto the avenue that Melanie’s apartment stood overlooking a flower shop similar to the one Damian often went into with the ginger he tended to hit on, but the sign painted on the shop window was a very faded Vert de Terre green that looked like the outside of a dead lamb’s ear. The little blonde’s apartment wasn’t up in the heights like it was before her attack, but it wasn’t trashy either. A nice brick apartment, but with no graffiti or drunks passed out on the stoop.  
  
Damian looked out the window as Terry parked close to the sidewalk and both of their blue eyes (that tended to tint red in cool light, almost like blood on a window during a rainstorm) looked up to the window that Mel’s apartment had; the closest and safest to the fire escape. A little gold and silver wind chime was hanging on a hook and lightly brushing the window glass.  
  
“I’m going to have to at least introduce you,” Terry said, not without a little order and stern direction, putting the car in park with much difficulty as the stick-shift stalled thrice and made a horrible moan, “Otherwise she’ll think you’re Tallant and probably bolt out the window.”  
  
Damian’s nose creased with thick, angry lines with his anger growing along his face and his eyes tinted that terrifying red for a blink, before his teeth lengthened no more than a centimeter and then everything reversed with…understanding.   
  
“Fine. But you introduce us and you are gone. I can meet you at Tamara’s when I’m done with the woman.”

* * *

_Seventeen of the bones below the knees are broken, not quite in half. Wrists bound in thick silver to the post of a bed befitting a Victorian King (probably had belonged to one as well, considering it was immaculate when coming into the room, with lace trim yellow from age and all of it smelling like the dead). Weariness and wish for death flows through the breach of adrenaline flowing through the body bound up and currently immobile.  
  
Lightning quick and blue like the inside of the ocean blue eyes looked over Terry in appreciation. The workup he had gotten from the little woman with the scar along her pelvic bone and the albino with one red eye he had taken up—compliments of his partner, thoughtful demon that she was—had left him painfully hard, unlike three years ago when he had just watched when he had so wanted to do the deed. He hadn’t sweated as much as he would have liked from the exercise he’d had for an hour before his prize had been dropped in, but the blood he’d retrieved as promised and spat into that empty French wine bottle ten minutes ago still clung to his teeth and the bottom side of his tongue.  
  
He was ready this time. Impotence would not come. Three years was a long time to build up the courage that had faltered that one night in those empty apartments._

* * *

[ _Melanie Walker’s Apartment complex…]_  
  
After knocking on the door to Mel’s apartment—very heavy, all silver metal painted an attractive periwinkle blue with a knocker in the middle shaped like a lioness with a rat hanging from its mouth—Terry tried not to show how shocked he was (especially with Damian standing right beside him) with a blonde opened the door. The blonde was someone he knew, was in his therapy group, but was a he and not someone he expected to see at this apartment.  
  
Ghoul, gloriously lean muscled with his hair let down and in nothing but a pair of grey gym pants, stood in the door, looking with amusement at Terry—good Gotham, the undead man could probably be paid to just stand in a window and make a fortune from it—and with not a little instinctive suspicion at Damian.  
  
“Terry, it’s nice to see you,” the undead drawled, his New England accent causing Damian’s eyebrows to knit up, perhaps wondering why someone who may very well be aristocratic—like the Waynes themselves—would be standing in an apartment in Gotham, “And, your…brother. Something I can help you with?”  
  
Terry coughed into his hand and scratched the back of his head, “Um, my brother needs to interview Melanie and, I guess, since you’re here, you as well. There have been…”  
  
Awkwardness spread quickly in the space of the pause Terry put forth and Ghoul got the message almost as swiftly as a shadow from a pigeon moving along the lines of buildings on the way to a nest. He knew what Terry was saying and the young detective was glad he didn’t have to continue and explain about the bodies Damian and Terry had to see in the morgue earlier.   
  
Sucking in a deep breath of the air the apartment provided that smelled like cheep beer and tequila thanks to the tenants on the first floor having had a party that only ended at five that morning, Ghoul invited them inside, avoiding Damian’s gaze and called back into the apartment for his girlfriend.  
  
“Melanie,” he called, his accented voice echoing in the wide hall that led away from the very large living room the detectives and the undead stood in and into the kitchen that led to the room Melanie and Ghoul shared, “We have company.”

* * *

_Rage has never been something that Damian—nor Helena, bless her little figure—have been gifted at controlling. A point to well remember for all of the moral lacking, self-possessing degenerates of Gotham and anywhere else that cross their path and leave or take something less than wanted.  
  
There is no feeling running through Damian when he sees on his brother’s apartment door—the apartment he’s been keeping for a year to study his cases and cold cases and do things that most of the others of the family would never understand; paint, play the violin, snuff tobacco like some contemptible, horny rich bastard at a Regency party—had been locked from the inside with the little brass chain and there, upon the knocker and the eyehole, was a sort of square of red with two dots and a curved line. Under the smiley face is the jade paint of Terry’s door and Damian does not need to inhale to know that the square painted there is blood.  
  
In the back of his mind—a raging inferno, now that his eyes are ruby red and sunrise orange with pupils dilated and his teeth are sharp enough to tear the jugular from a rhino, skin going much paler than his evolutionary pedigree really allowed—he made a note to call Helena and Babs to put out an APB for Terry (praying that they would find him and not just the body he once inhabited).  
  
And then he kicked the door down with no more energy for him than it took a human to flick away the husk of a dead fly.  
  
Stepping over the debris of what had been a rather pretty door, the shafts and pieces of wood splintered like rectangle twigs, Damian has the set of mind to scream so long and hard at the sight within that it would go out and long for miles into Gotham’s East district. But no, he was a Wayne, he would not do that until he could not take it anymore—‘Or if they find a body.’  
  
The entire place was a mess. A wreck like that of which Damian had only seen in some of those junkyards Helena had more often than not dragged him and Terry to with those monstrous things called Indie bands for concerts held out of the way in the event of a riot. The floor was stained with the soiled, murky water previously held in the vase holding a full set of red roses that was now smashed to pieces by the window; the window itself was broken along with the ebony panes. The table Damian had sat innumerable hours with Terry at, discussing work and such, was cracked down the center, one of the legs placed upon the island in the kitchen. The end of the sleek piece of metal leg—one of those ones that was long and black, metal, with what looked like a clawed cat’s paw gripping a ball—had a smear of blood on the end with three black hands sticking to it.   
  
Under the leg, put there deliberately and with three bloody fingerprints at the bottom corner, was a piece of ripped flyleaf paper—no doubt from one of the books scattered on the floor to the hall leading into Terry’s utility room—with too sleek handwriting on it.  
  
Damian didn’t bother to follow procedure by putting on gloves and snatched the paper up; his now red spectrum eyes tracing the words with contempt (with a healthy helping of familial concern).  
  
{… **Don’t worry, he’s not dead. I’m just picking him up for your brother…}**_

* * *

The young woman came in from the hallway, lithe and graceful; all brilliant with blue eyes rather like great pools of intent, tendril-like gold hair that Damian could imagine blossoming into flowers and topping it all off was the markings if all lycanthropes in animal appendages—hers were her white snow leopard ears with identical spots on the back that appeared like eyes and her five inch (curse Tallant for hurting her so it was no longer as long as both of her arms) silky tail that was all gentle grace and soft fur any man (immortal or no) would love to run their hands along. Or, would have once; if only it could be held in both hands again.  
   
Thank the powers that be that she was wearing clothing (a large work shirt that obviously belonged to Ghoul that reached her knees and black runner’s shorts) or Damian had no doubt Terry would have started blushing and excreting sweat from his pores.  
  
“Detective Wayne and, um, Wayne,” Ghoul paused awkwardly, eyes trained steadily on Damian still, body quite stiff and tense, “Are here to talk to us. There have been…more killings, I suppose?”  
  
It was a question but it was rhetorical and Melanie picked up on it quite quickly, padding over to Ghoul at the mere sight of Damian and not feeling quite as vocal as she usually was in the morning after she and her boyfriend had completed two rolls in the hay.  
  
“What would you like, detectives?” The young woman queried, curving around Ghoul’s side and then clinging to his arm, taking his grey skinned hand in her own tiny pale one with the sharpened, painted fingernails.  
  
Terry had no real way to explain this easily, this would be hard enough, and pussy footing around it would only rile Ghoul up—like in therapy their first year and their therapist said something stupid enough to send his into a spitting frenzy—so he turned right into explanation, trying to not look over to Damian. The elder detective was taking out his notepad from his pocket, pen out from the inside of his suit jacket (like some slick politician) and glared at his little brother to get on with it.  
  
“Um, I can’t stay. I’m not allowed,” Terry practically drawled out in accusation towards his brother, back still stiff enough that Damian felt if he kicked him hard enough, he’d bounce like a diving board, “My partner will be interviewing you—just for a little while, just for clarification. If there’s anything you can offer us, it would be a big help.”  
  
Damian growled under his breath and Terry got the point, but not without giving the elder vampire/detective the finger from behind his back as he opened the door and started leaving.  
  
“I’ll see you guys at therapy. Feel free to tell me if Dami was an asshole. Bye.”  
  
The door shut—loud and clear and strong—and the two victims of Damian’s brother’s partner were left with the spitting image of the person who had cut them up and observed their attacks.  
  
Maybe Damian could see now why Terry had come up with him… _’-tt-‘_ ….

* * *

_“…No…no, stop, you can’t…”  
  
Voice like poisoned honey placed in a yard full of flowers to kill wasps and flies abruptly came to Terry’s ear, along with elongated teeth taking up his pointed flesh and gnawing hard.  
  
“I can **this** time, little brother.”  
  
Terry could smell two very distinctive—nay, **familiar** —blood types clinging to Tallant’s breath as the elder vampire—his brother, for all that was and is—breathed in and out, flicking his lithe strawberry red tongue inside of Terry’s ear as deep as he could, before…  
  
The Earth fell out of orbit.  
  
Tallant’s hands, with his treacherously clean fingernails, found Terry’s pectorals first; a pointer fingernail slid up and down the center of his left nipple, the other hand pinched down hard with the middle finger and thumb on the right. Tallant’s mouth moved from Terry’s ear—now dripping with his disgusting and blood riddled saliva—down to the area that connected his younger brother’s neck to his shoulder and pierced the skin with his sharp teeth in the fashion of all vampires; vicious and hard enough to make Terry cry out.  
  
The crying out did not stop—especially when he felt exactly what he had three years ago with a foreign object made of high priced latex and rubber or leather in that empty apartment, his eyes trained outside of the window where Tallant had then been sitting while Delia had her way with him. Only, this object was made of rock hard flesh, was twice the size around as the neck of a beer bottle, possibly three times longer and moved in time with Tallant’s hips pressing hard into Terry.  
  
Terry’s own canines lengthened, crystal blue eyes going a sort of sunset orange with his voice going hoarse in a silent scream.   
  
Tallant released the flexible shoulder he had punctured and growled out like a lion in heat, working his hips harder into the young one, and sucked in as much blood as he could. The four large (fresh) indentations of fingernails along his own pelvic muscles—his own blood no longer flowing, but just dribbling droplets no bigger than the body of a tadpole onto Terry’s porcelain skin—added a raw burn with every thrust._

* * *

[ ** _Central Gotham, near the Shopping District, at Tamara Fox’s penthouse…]_**  
  
Standing before the door to the penthouse, at the very tippity-top of a building that would put the Eifel Tower into throws of convoluted envy, Terry felt his face contort upwards from the music echoing inside like something a flaming one man Cabaret would listen to.  
  
“… _Please, be gentle, sentimental…Go ahead and try to give my cheek a pat…But, be daring…and uncaring…When you pinch me, try to pinch me where there’s fat…”_  
  
Despite his better judgment and the slightly disgusted frown plastered across his face—after all, he and the rest of the family had known Tamara somewhat, years ago when she and their brother Tim had dated for a straight year; but that was before Tim had caught the woman with someone else and thrown her clothes out of his apartment window into five o’clock traffic—Terry took his hand to the hanging tassel next to the door that stood as a bell and pulled on it hard.  
  
The recording of a witch’s scream made him press himself against the far wall, clutching the notepad he had out to his chest like it was his heart.  
  
‘ _The fuck is wrong with this woman?’_  
  
With his body pressed to the door—oh, he could imagine how much he looked like a frightened cat in a suit at that—a jiggling came from the other side in the penthouse and when the door opened he was confronted not by an admittedly gorgeous black wolf shape changer, but a woman he was also supposed to interview after this before he ultimately went to see “Uncle” Dusan.  
  
Perhaps if Dami had come with Terry, the young man could have gotten quite the look of sputtering surprise from the elder that usually alluded the rest of the Wayne family unless Dick happened to in the room and really on top of his annoying game. A fun time would have been had watching Damian’s eyes grow the size of ostrich eggs and his mouth open and close like the last breath of a sheep when the throat is cut and it is hung upside down on a hook in a meat locker.  
  
It appeared that Damian wasn’t the only one that was getting a two for one deal today in the interview department. Was everyone in their group—Terry’s and Damian’s alike—having sex together?  
  
“Detective Wayne?”   
  
Standing there looking at him with eyes so like trees in the fall rather than the summer as the report Damian presented Terry said this woman was linked to, blonde hair perfectly fitted in a braid ruffled out from sleep—little wisps were trying to break free of the hair band—and wearing no more than white lace lingerie and a yellow see-through kimono robe, was the little British Summer fairy, Beryl. And Terry did know it was her, exactly and no other, as his eyes looked over her dainty dragonfly-like wings to behold the scaring from how they had healed, if somewhat gnarled and improper to make her look like one of those nasty little nixies that hang around back alleys and bogs with their nasty claws ready and willing to prick an unsuspecting individual.  
  
Considering she looked a stronger than what her pictures showed in her rape incident report, Terry decided to lean into this meeting as pleasantly as possible—unlike dear Damian.  
  
“Yes, um, hello Miss Beryl. Is Tamara home? I need to have a conversation with her…and you. Damian didn’t say you two were dating…”  
  
Beryl, lady that she was, smiled at the man and allowed him inside, wings tucking to the right so he wouldn’t brush close to them—he knew they were sensitive; probably the reason Delia had shredded them in the first place—and called back over her shoulder in almost a quiet and diluted form of déjà vu with Ghoul and Melanie.  
  
Though, when Tamara came out, she at least, was wearing pants (silk and baggy, like Arabians) that accentuated the curve of her long, bushy black tail, two butterfly berets next to each of her perky, soot black ears and a simple red top ruffled across her breasts to make them seem bigger than they actually were.  
  
In short, she was as Terry remembered her from dating Tim, with the differences of having a smarter, wiser look to her face—more woman now, when she had been rather girlish in breaking Tim’s heart—and the need to walk with a cane because of the damage Tallant or Delia had done to the muscles above her left knee.  
  
“Terry,” she chirped pleasantly, limping over with a smile at the young man, pleased to see a familiar face in the morning when he could hear the news pouring from her bedroom—now changed from that weird music to the annoying reporters Gotham had hosting the radio—about the dead bodies found in the graveyard that morning. So they had been expecting Terry, which was fine by him, at least he didn’t really have to explain that they should lock their doors and be more careful again because “surprise” those terrible, blood-letting people were back in town.

* * *

“ _Come on detective,” a voice like ten thousand souls damned to an eternity of vile laughter and crying called out from inside the dark of the building Damian had gone to, “You know very well that while your brother might not have any reason to have any fun in this part of the game, I myself cannot resist. So, come on in and let’s have a chat.”  
  
Damian, for what felt like the millionth time in ten hours whereas it had rarely happened in the last decade of his existence, growled low down in his throat like a caged jaguar, hissy and dark. His eyes—no longer beautiful blue and had not been since he’d seen his brother’s apartment ransacked with no more than a nasty sort of “you lose” written by Delia—wandered around the wide, winding and dark halls of the underground fortress he had gone into without a second thought. Barbara, Helena and Tim were monitoring him via satellite and the tiny micro-tracer implanted his shoulder like a tick since Bruce had ordered him to find his youngest son; Jason, Dick, Stephanie and Cassandra were checking out the other addresses to buildings no doubt abandoned and simple ways of effective misdirection by the bitch laughing at him in her own element of creeping dark shadows. He was on his own, but he knew—hoped and prayed—that Terry was in the building. He could smell his little brother’s scent, feel his presence and taste that Delia wouldn’t have drawn him to the building (at street level, that looked to be a simple antique shop; oh how fitting) without a reason and….  
  
Tallant’s blood was closer, rather than farther away.  
  
The proverbial cannon of a gun that he carried around for special occasions such as these—and what a gun it was; twice the size of his hands that carried both silver bullets and a kind of metallic poison that was great for the stronger supernatural creatures of the world—was trained in front of him, twitching whenever a shadow (and he knew it was that little demon in her black leather jacket and military style boots) moved from one place to another. He had fired once into the hall and gotten a rise of maliciousness in him when she had cried out. That feeling had faded quickly when her groans had turned into cackling and she had moved before he could jump her and (probably) beat her into telling him where his brother—brothers—were.  
  
“Where’s my brother?” Damian called out, voice much deeper the more anxious he became.  
  
“We’ll get to him soon,” she answered back, the feeling of something trying to crawl out of his skin intensifying at how calm she sound when he had found a rather atrocious blood stain on the floor and walls earlier when he shot her, “I’m just waiting for you to ask about the other two. Don’t you care what we did with them? Care if they’re dead?”  
  
Damian sneered at the dark, pausing as he came to a split in the hall that lead one way down into a  
brightly white, palely lit cement all around hallway with a door with a glass window in the center that clearly revealed the ceiling of a wide room, blue reflection bouncing off of what Damian could see, possibly having quite a bit of water in it. The other way led down, down, down another flight of stairs into darkness and the slightest flicker of candle light.  
  
“What, is this some kind of cliché?” Damian called out again, enraged ever more now, “Both rooms have the three you took separated and I’m supposed to go into one while the other person or persons die? Are you really that uncreative?”  
  
This time, she laughs, but not like that of a hyena or the Wicked Witch of the West, but rather that of a child out in a yard of weeds that stretch high above the head and amused tremendously at both being lost and being unseen. It was almost gentle and made Damian want to find her and put three bullets between her eyes.  
  
“No, dear Mr. Wayne, nothing like that. You get to be the hero today for everyone. They are our favorite rides, after all. No use to us dead.”  
  
“So…”  
  
“What’s the fun in playing games if we’re the only ones that really win?”_

* * *

[ **Melanie’s Apartment…]**  
  
“…So, the files said that you knew Delia at some point? Where?”  
  
“Um, well, I met her when I was in college…When I still went to classes for the American Ballet Company. We only really spoke once, when I was playing Sleeping Beauty and she was in the role for Carabosse. She told me my form was perfect at the end of the dance the rest of the class had to do in front of about three hundred people. I never saw her again after that until, well, you know.”  
  
“And you, sir?”  
  
“At a computer anti-hacking seminar. She contradicted half of what the teacher had to say and gave the class a laugh. I was in the seat next to her and was stupid enough to keep her open cup of coffee from being knocked over and into her lap. Now, I wish that I had let it fall and burn into her skin.”  
  
“Ghoul…”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“It’s fine, sir. Now, I know this is hard to answer, but we really need to know. How did she penetrate you? Terry was too shaken up to remember and the hospital records show that you two were the only ones found conscious after Tallant injured you.”  
  
Silence.  
  
“…Please. We need to know so we know what to look for.”  
  
“S-She…didn’t use a foreign object.”  
  
“…I’m sorry; what?”

* * *

[ **Tamara’s penthouse…]**  
  
“…that’s when Tim and I saw him at the restaurant and Tim pointed him out as Damian’s brother. He saw Tim pointing and came over to say hello.”  
  
“And you, Miss Beryl?”  
  
“I was with Dick in England at a museum. That man wandered over when Dick and I were looking over that painting of Judith cutting off that gross guy’s head. He commented on something about the artist being the first real and most renowned woman artist in that century, said something I couldn’t understand to Dick in Arabic, I think, and then he walked over to this woman and old man I think was his family. He was creepy then, too.”

* * *

_At the same time, but in two different places across town in completely different sects of Gotham, a sight was revealed as both Terry and Damian paused at the doors of the last person on their lists that they had to see.  
  
In the woods that stood adjacent to a small castle owned and lived in by Delia and Deidre’s mother (a powerful and immortal personification of a woman if there ever was one) that stood on the crest of a sheer cliff toward the sea, Damian stopped outside of a cottage with brown stones leading up to it.  
  
At the opposite end of the spectrum, in the historical district where few wandered but the dead that lived and the living dead and the occasional powerful supernatural that just wanted to be left alone, Terry stopped in the hall of a privately owned—very private in a way that only the truly rich and powerful could live off of—practically Gothic building with a very cozy “Keep Out” sign posted on the window out front.  
  
Equal horrifying sights met equally blue eyes so like their father.  
  
Damian bolted into the cottage like a jack rabbit, to find that the door had been nicely removed from its hinges keeping it to the doorway. On the door, dead center, like a calling card of the macabre was a bright, fresh square of red blood, smeared with a horridly innocent smiley face that showed the Briar Rabbit light brown coloring of the door itself. Very little inside the home was touched, except for three red glass dinner plates hurled against the fore wall and the white curtains ripped from the living room windows with writing drawn on it, **{…Mm, sorry for everything being such a mess. She’s still as disgustingly upbeat as she used to be and I had to break something…}**  
  
With suspicion and sadness in knowing Dusan was most probably already gone— **taken away** —Terry walked over the threshold of the apartment doorway and frowned at seeing broken glass that had been wine bottles, champagne glasses, a table made of both glass and delicate pewter. Eggs Benedict, Black bread and expensive—very strong and light green—tea was thrown about in the kitchen. The upper half of Dusan’s front door—the part that wasn’t shattered and broken in large pieces on the floor along with the gold doorknob—sat on the couch like a portrait. A red square in blood was painted where the eyehole was; a smiley face smudged upon the red showed off the black paint of the door. Terry’s ultra-perceptive eyes became glassy like the water on windows as he read the knife carved wordings just under the blood in neat print, **{…OMG, is your twin the only person in your family with a calm disposition or what? It took me half an hour to pick him up this time…}** _

* * *

As Terry took the last step down from the steps of the very wide stoop of Tamara’s apartment, he was pleased to find his brother sitting on the hood of their car, arms folded and looking…troubled.  
  
Terry tucked his hands into his coat pockets, one hand pulling out the pair of sleek black sunglasses to slip them onto his face and keep the sun’s rays from damaging his retinas. When they perched at the end of his nose, it was like looking at one of those seventies age hippies—all John Lennon near the end of his life while touring. It made him look attractive to the fairer sex, but they really just annoyed his older brother, whom finally looked up at his approach and then sneered widely with an added –tt- when his baby blues met black lenses. Although, he still looked troubled.  
  
“Don’t tell me your interview with the blondes was that much of a downer?”  
  
Damian shrugged, legs falling off of the hood of the car to touch the ground with the tips of his toes, “No, it was actually rather…illuminating. Found a couple pieces of the puzzle that we were missing before.”  
  
Terry pulled out a piece of cinnamon gum for himself from a little pack more than half used and offered it to Damian. When the older vampire shook his head, Terry just took the one for himself and was pleased by the flavor before continuing their conversation.  
  
“Really? Well, let’s have it then.”  
  
“Well, I think that all of the victims,” he says victims and not ‘us’ so he doesn’t have to pause with the feeling of discomfort, “Knew Tallant before he attacked them, and met Delia before she attacked as well. Except you, apparently, as, you said yourself that you’d never met the little bitch in all of your life, right?”  
  
“…Right.”  
  
“Well, I think you’re the only piece that doesn’t really fit this pattern. I have a theory, and I really don’t want to put it out there unless…you won’t freak out. Or, try not to. Just this once I wouldn’t blame you if you tell me to shut the hell up.”  
  
Terry continued to chew on the gum, but motioned for the both of them to get into the car before they continued this scintillating conversation in open view. If he was going to be uncomfortable, he’d rather it would be while he was sitting on plush leather that smelled of the country from when Bruce used to take them out to Smallville in order to talk/spend time with the Kent vampire clan.  
  
Once in the car, Terry took in a very strong breath and that caused the taste of the cinnamon to burn his tongue. It felt good and Terry nodded at his older brother, trusting him perhaps more than most of the rest of their family simply because he had gone through what he had gone through.  
  
Damian cleared his throat, tongue tracing the edge of one of his fangs before continuing at all, “I think, there’s a chance, that Delia only raped you because you were in a good area to do it in when she was done with her sister, and because…she could penetrate you herself when Tallant couldn’t go through with it.”  
  
“Penetrate me herself,” Terry echoed, the phrase niggling something important in his mind that he couldn’t understand for some reason, “What was the second piece of the puzzle you picked up?”  
  
Damian sat a long moment, gritting his teeth, biting his tongue and then Terry could smell his older brother’s blood when he finally let loose a bomb.  
  
“Miss Walker and her boyfriend have just informed me that the bitch that Tallant has been working with…isn’t technically a bitch. She’s a hermaphrodite.”  
  
The gum that was still fresh and had made him feel so nice—as if he were human and tasting such a flavor could fill him up—sucked in a sharp breath and thus sucked the gum all the way down his throat. It was a slow burning pain but it was different from the burn in his practically empty guts at wanting to vomit at such a realization.  
  
“I…She…It…How can you be sure? They—Neither of them have ever mentioned penetration! Her sister was pregnant and they’re identical twins! That-that can’t be right. Are you kidding me here?”  
  
Damian shook his head, taking out a bottle of straight Arabian thoroughbred blood he kept between the leather of the two front car seats, handed it to Terry and then proceeded to take out the report, not on Ghoul or Melanie, but the one on Deidre, looking for the details from the hospital while Terry downed half of the Rouge Noir colored liquid. Certain blood types made certain vampires either drunk like a human with liquor or it could make them intensely awake like swallowing an entire pot of espresso. For Terry, Arabian horses carried the right genotype to make him both very awake and have the feeling of his veins being on fire.  
  
It wouldn’t calm him, not for sure, but it would keep him focused on their conversation so Damian wouldn’t be talking for nothing.  
  
Terry swallowed another third of the bottle as Damian got to the page he wanted and started speaking the fine print.  
  
“According to the doctor’s report, Deidre’s pregnancy wasn’t like her mother’s. Her mother gave birth to the twins, but unlike most immortal woman, Miss Harley Quinzell conceived Delia through that mass murderer Jack Something-or-Other who committed those atrocities in Crime Alley and Summerset, oh, ten decades ago. When Harley conceived Delia, she self-made Deidre at the opposite side of that bitch’s DNA shift; that basically means that, yes, Deidre is her twin, but she’s not the same as Delia because she was made through Parthenogenesis, exactly how Deidre made herself pregnant. So, yes, what Ghoul and Melanie say about Delia is probably true. And, aside from that, it’s the only thing we have to fill in the blanks for when she attacked you. I suppose she must have been the perfect partner for Tallant because she could do what he couldn’t.”  
  
“Couldn’t do what?” Terry questioned, wiping some blood that had run down his chin off with the skin of his wrist, “He attacked you and Dusan and then he went after Tamara and Beryl. What would he need her for if he did what he wanted.”  
  
“Did Delia know you?”  
  
The question, for what it was worth and with the force it was given to make Damian seem kind—he only ever used such a light, quietly questioning voice when interviewing victims of the same crime he and Terry suffered, or with small children—made Terry stop from taking another gulp of blood from the fine glass bottle with the blue lettering on the front. It made him really stop to think, not resisting the memories of years before to pass over in his head.  
  
“…I…I don’t think so. I mean, I remember us all meeting her mom at that charity seven years ago with Oswald Cobblepot hosting that thing for endangered birds, sure, but…No, I don’t think I ever met Delia.”  
  
Damian let out a heavy breath and Terry flinched when he took one of the forms he was holding and crushed it in his hand like a dead flower, his fingernails piercing through the paper.  
  
“…As far as I can tell, and what I think you might have gathered from Fox and Beryl, is that all of us victims knew both Tallant and Delia before they attacked us. Now I have to ask you before we go and see Deidre and uncle Dusan: Why would Delia attack you, when she had never met you before in her life? It’s like with people who have domination parties that have one person tie the submissive down and rough them up while another person sits in a corner and gives orders.”  
  
Frost that people feel in the late months of Autumn crept up deep into Terry’s eyes and his teeth and the drink residing in his gut like a puddle of curdling mud. With reflex and very little movement, Terry opened the window on his side of the car, downed the rest of his drink in one single go and with speed and so much disgust it was frightening, tossed the bottle out onto the street. A shower of glass littered the black tarmac like stars in a black sky.  
  
“…I always wondered why he just stood there looking at me the whole time, from the little pieces I could recall. He just stood there, with that smile and she kept looking back at him… She turned me to face him after the first hour—I remember that. She did all that for him because he still thought I was too good for him. How generous.”  
  
The older brother didn’t make any move other than to turn the car on, spin it around—careful to avoid the glass—and made for the road that would take them to uncle Dusan’s. He would drop Terry there before going to see Deidre. Terry could use more familial company and Damian wanted to meet the tiny thing that Terry described as the polar opposite of…the hermaphrodite.

* * *

_The cold water Tallant had dragged Dusan out of was still clinging to the albino’s skin like ice when his nephew dragged him into another room that wasn’t used at one time to probably allow children to swim in that now served—for the last couple hours or so, anyway—to probably house ice blocks the size of mini-freezers in hotel rooms. He was still shivering and shaking from the cold—not from how that choppy blonde haired bitch had hauled him out of his apartment as if he wasn’t a person and easy to throw around (of course he had been in the apartment; it was the first time seeing her in three years since she’s mutilated his face, what, was he supposed to be pliant?)—but he was trying to seem stronger than he had been when Tallant tossed him onto a plain mattress and dropped his pants.  
  
Dusan was already naked, so he could guess what was coming. The screaming—broken in pieces, sort of similar to a distressed dog or a zebra being chased by lions—that had gone on for an hour while he was in the seclusion of that wide white empty room and the pool had left him on edge already. Now, it was much worse when he hit the musty— **smelling of sex** —mattress and found blood stains in the shapes of fingers and in round droplets the size of silver dollars.  
  
Pity his nephew hadn’t bothered to tie his hands.  
  
“So, White Ghost, when was the last time you spoke to Terry—“  
  
Battering claws in the dark and white skin moving faster than human eye, but slow enough for a well bred vampire flew through the air, cutting off the question at its middle. It wasn’t enough to do damage, Dusan knew that even as his claws perforated the rock hard muscles of Tallant’s middle, just below the pit of his naval; still, it made the half-blind man grin triumphantly when his nephew—curse him, gods, and make him die—cried out.  
  
It was worth it, even as Tallant lost his own malicious smile and pinned Dusan’s arms above his head, elongated teeth finding the other vampire’s throat and milking him as his hips hit home. Over and over and over again.  
  
It didn’t take long until Dusan was screaming too, Tallant’s clawed hand gripping his member so tight it seemed to be ripping out at the scrotum. But the feeling of Tallant’s blood and not Dusan’s own, was worth it._

* * *

Damian decided, quite singularly and without asking Terry at all, that they should have some food before they went to see their last people on their lists.   
  
The vampire café they were sitting in was well polished and beautiful. All long windows along the walls and double-seating tables for couple or hollow seating near the back for bigger groups. The table they sat at was at the very back and Damian had ordered for both of them—from Lee, a nice Asian woman with slender, gentle beauty that wasn’t a vampire but treated all of them right and nicely and always got tipped well for it—without looking to Terry for his choices.  
  
Anyway, as they both were sucking on the dead neck of their own freshly killed rabbit (flop-eared for Terry and white wild for Damian) the elder of the two looked over his baby brother and tried not to feel guilty for telling him the truth. Terry had always been dead-set on knowing everything about the cases he was working, had preached to Damian again and again that the truth was important. Damian shouldn’t feel badly for telling him something about the night he did not wish to remember.  
  
‘Knowing everything and the why was the first step to healing’ was what Helena often said when forcing them to go to therapy.  
  
But it still hurt. This, Damian knew and so, he wouldn’t push Terry until after he had digested the whole rabbit and started talking first.

* * *

_There was swift, violent jolt on the inside of her organs that she hadn’t felt at all in three and a half years. It was finally the end of the hour and Deidre was glad for it to end. The screaming in her head had reached out of her body and echoed the walls and her eardrums were ringing when Tallant pulled out of her.  
  
At least it wasn’t her sister this time. She couldn’t tell if Delia had declined to use her because she didn’t want to or because she was still bleeding from the slash across her eye that Deidre had given her in her—now pretty defiled—house, but at the least she wasn’t using her.  
  
The break in her skin from where he’d pierced her neck was still bleeding profusely and when he grabbed a fistful of her hair she was too lacking in energy to do anything but watch the blood drop, let him drag her along and observe Delia waiting in the hallway with a large bottle with French printed along the label. Tallant spat the younger twin’s blood into it— **oh, he could hold a lot in his throat** —and continued on. Delia waved at her once before she turned into a short hallway (all white) and disappeared into a room.  
  
“That was fun,” the tall, Arabic man said, rather casually as he dragged her to a room she could hear water, low lights from the hall flicking across the light tan, beige and brown hyena spots leading down her neck to her tailbone, “Thanks for the sound effects. I appreciate a woman who fights a little.”_

* * *

“Do you think he wanted to?”  
  
Turning the car down the long winding alleyway that lead to Dusan’s place where the albino enjoyed his solitude—Damian often mentioned that since the attack he had become even more of a monk that he had been before, sans the religious aspects—Damian blinked in the driver’s seat, taking small sips out of the straw in his to-go cup filled with boiling hot blood of one of the tiger lycanthropes that gave it out for a hundred a pint.  
  
Terry kept his cool forehead pressed to the window, but continued gently, “I mean, when he was watching that bitch. Do you think if he had the nerve he would have done it himself?”  
  
“Yes,” no hesitation, no awkwardness. Why should Damian lie when it would be just so pointless at this point in time?  
  
“Why?”  
  
“…I’m really more comfortable not knowing that, if you don’t mind. My mother and grandfather warped him, yes, but he is still responsible for his own actions. Dusan left eventually, so Tallant certainly could have. I have no idea why he does what he does, or what he wanted to do, and I’m perfectly okay with that. Be grateful he didn’t actually do it.”  
  
The car stopped a block from Dusan’s apartment and Terry looked over his brother.  
  
“You really have a way of putting things in perspective when you want to.”  
  
“Don’t get used to it,” Damian muttered, “I’m not Dick or Tim. Now get out, be nice to uncle and I’ll pick you up after I go and see the little woman.”  
  
Terry stepped out of the car, but tapped on Damian’s window before he left, “Thanks, Dami.”

* * *

_The virtual cannon Damian carried around knocked out the lock on the door he had found at the bottom of those long stairs with the candles hanging on a chandelier over head. A brush of wind into a delicate dandelion with its white seedlings ready to take flight.  
  
A reflection of himself in such a rage reflected back at him so quickly after the door splintered into oblivion that he aimed the gun between the eyes and fired twice without blinking. It turned out to be a life sized mirror and it was so strong that only the bullet holes were made into it, but only cracking the whole of the frame, not shattering.  
  
“…D-Dami…”  
  
An angel’s voice with a broken tenor and spirit made Damian turn and push his weapon back into the holster hidden under his coat that was now tattered at the ends like drifting bat wings.   
  
Terry lay chained to the headboard of an antiquity age bed, the semi-warm air from the ventilation drifting over him and distorting his breath. Sheets lay discarded and covered in traces of blood with no protection offer Terry’s huddled naked form. Blood lined his teeth and he trilled for Damian again. A broken winged bat caught on a barbed wire fence.  
  
Damian muttered nothing that stuck together as he broken the chain from the board with his bare hands, ears pricked lightly and hearing the far-off sounds of police vans and an ambulance. The vans would be useless, of course; Tallant and Delia were gone by now, no doubt their other two victims—the albino uncle, the blonde twin—somewhere still in the building, most likely in the room Damian had passed over, but Damian didn’t care. Let the rest of the family pick them up, there was only this for now; his carefully cracking the cuffs around Terry’s bleeding wrists, taking his brother up in a soft and strong hug and smelling Tallant’s blood along Terry’s fangs.  
  
“…You fought back?”  
  
Terry managed a half-smile filled with pain that was too much for being a vampire so young, “Oh yeah. Bastard didn’t expect it…”  
  
Damian let go of him a moment to pick up the sheet and wrap it around his lithe, pale and trembling form to save him his decency—yeah, he was still better than everyone on the force; he always would be since he survived this sort of thing twice—and just waited.  
  
“Did they lose this round, or did we tie?” Damian asked, half-interested in the answer, still forming his very own opinion of everything.  
  
“They were both bleeding…We won this round, I think. Blood for blood.”  
  
“Blood for blood, indeed.”_


	3. Restraint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “…Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say, ‘I really don’t think I’m strong enough’…”

_-:-_  
I like restraint, if it doesn’t go too far.  
-Mae West.

* * *

**{…Three months after stitches and help and movement and planting seeds to change…}**  
  
“This is disgusting.”  
  
Terry rolled his eyes from behind the protection of his sunglasses, the sunlight slithering around the breaks in the misty, dark grey clouds above their heads, ready very much to spew down more flood causing rain upon the two detectives as well as the rest of Gotham.   
  
“No, Damian, it’s a bowling alley,” Terry corrected, pulling on his brother’s arm so they could get into the warm building and out of the chilly wind, “And everyone’s still waiting for us, so please move your ass.”  
  
Damian, still dressed in his usual black suit, but lacking a tie today, chomped his teeth twice, but allowed his younger brother to pull him into the double spinning doors of **_‘Collective Knives’_** ; it was the only bowling alley downtown near the boys’ now jointly owned apartment—may the gods fuck over Helena sometime soon for getting them to agree to actually rent an apartment with each other, rather than stay in the manor with the rest of their siblings; “Better for recovery” she said—that had sufficient low lighting for vampires and the darker supernaturals and Damian still knew, somehow, that the whole place was going to smell like cheap liquor, disinfectant spray, and those weird little glow sticks woman and children wore to stand out or whatever.   
  
Truly disgusting.

* * *

**_{…Fifteen days after rape, torture and many narrow escapes…}_ **

_The highway stretched long and far, all white scrapes and ragged, unkempt fence lines that went as far as the eye could see. Deep black fingernails dug into the steering wheel. Muffled groans came from the back of the moving van the likes of which could spook a jaguar._  
  
Humming under her breath a quiet lullaby that she recalled her mother singing to her and her little sister since they were a month old and could understand words and emotions the way seers could read tea leaves at certain times during the day and night, Delia turned on the road again, the tires causing slush on the ground to splash in waves and mix with half frozen mud. She absently flipped on the radio in an attempt to drawn out another one of her partner’s moans as he added more vervain and mint to the infected wounds along his stomach (compliments of his kinda cute, snow white uncle) as well as the bite marks along his jaw near his left ear and quite prominently along his throat and muscled shoulder (compliments of the little brother that had given Delia less than half of her vision in her left eye, no matter how much crushed tiger lily, geranium, liquid mercury and raw meat she ate).  
  
 **“…Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say, ‘I really don’t think I’m strong enough’…”**  
  
“Oh, goody, Sheryl Crow,” the little demon smirked, turning up the volume even as Tallant finally stopped his belly aching and she the door that connected their sleeping arrangements in the back to the driver’s cab.  
  
He had put back on a rather simple black button up shirt, but the scent that emitted from his self medication and his injuries was still enough to make Delia glance over with her good eye—the one that didn’t now have a cataract similar to a blind dog—and just look over the liquid rising from his bandages to the shirt’s fabric. She grinned to herself and eased into another turn as he took a seat in the passenger’s side.  
  
The white reflections of the sun bounced in through the windows and onto Tallant’s clean, sandy and Arabic skin. It made the moving van they virtually lived in until reaching Canada’s border seem like a moving hospital; like he was a sick patient.

* * *

Stepping into the place was a sort of passport into the strange and truly unexpected. Damian and Terry were not at all expecting to be greeted by two large, spotted hyenas with matching red leather collars at the bottom of a flight of stairs that led into a large, high ceiling barroom with couples coddling in private booths, low, silky music and that was…well, again, not what was to be expected.  
  
“Erm, hello,” Terry spoke, tentatively showing the more dominant looking beast his open palm, to which it started sniffing, paused a moment, sniffed again—this time like it was double checking something in its head—and then looked up at Terry in a way the young vamp was sure to be the same scrutiny Alfred gave their family dog Ace whenever he came in from the rain and decided to dry out on the living room sofa.  
  
The ridge between its eyes creased upwards—like it was amused—and moved aside, head nodding to the dark area that the bar occupied like an oasis in a vast desert. The other hyena was growling at Damian as the tan man with the scent of cinnamon, blood and various floral essences tried to hug the wall and get around it to no avail.  
  
“Um,” Terry started, lightly tapping the growling, smaller hyena on the rump, getting his attention just long enough for Damian to give it a sneer that clearly meant that the first chance he got he would be dropkicking it into the street they had just come from, “He’s with me. We’re looking for the bowling alley; do you know where we go? There are people waiting for us.”  
  
Both hyenas, with the singularity that came from twins, looked at each other, up at Terry and then gave two quiet giggles; the one that had growled at Damian and was still giving him an annoyed look, grabbed the end of Terry’s coat tails. The other snuck up behind Damian—apparently, he was the boss between the two, exhibiting more poise and dignity—and gently nudged him after Terry.  
  
Being lead into a place that showed all the signs of being a fancy bar/restaurant/escort service for the well paying and possibly high demanding gentle person by two hyenas was indeed rather…strange, but the two brothers had experienced even more disturbing things. Witnessing the wedding of an immortal that didn’t look older than ten to a crocodile lycanthrope came to mind, and even more strange before that. Sentient hyenas with attitude didn’t even make the top twenty in the list of things they’d seen.  
  
Beyond the bar they came upon—all high ceilings and low lighting to give it a feel of being even deeper underground, three chandeliers hanging about with cut glass and fifteen carat gold trimmings spaced out to even the effects of light and dark—was a small, private looking restaurant and theater with various people the two detectives could recognize standing about drinking, laughing, listening to the band on stage. Everything was dark black and blues and green centerpieces on the few tables. Pamela Isley--an immortal that personified plant life in Gotham—sat at a table with her husband, a half-human demon from the section of Tartarus that handled gamblers that tried to cheat death, Harvey Dent. They were crooning and Damian felt and held back his gag at the way she kissed the rotted out side of his face. Near the bandstand were Paxton and Derek Powers (second rate vampires that Bruce Wayne had to deal with on occasion), drinking and looking over the waitresses and Chelsea, Blade and Bunny Vreeland, the three women singing ‘ _Mr. Sandman’_ in their tight, socialite voices.  
  
Passing by all those guests, none even bothering to look at the men as the hyenas lead them through expertly, Terry and Damian found themselves going down another set of stairs, these ones winding clockwise for three flights, until they could hear people laughing and what sounded like thunder, punctuated by loud crashes and shrieks of…joy?

* * *

_Humming still along with the music of the radio as it turned to ‘Samson’ by Regina Spektor, their home away from home turning on the road and just able to make out the figure of a red barn in the far off distance, cows dotting the fields along the fence line, Delia fished around under her seat, until her little hand gripped the head of a bottle, still warm from when she left it in the sun that morning while Tallant had stopped his shift for driving and they got pancakes at a roadhouse diner with the big yellow ‘R’ in the ‘DINER’ missing._  
  
Her smile not quite the red rictus it usually was, she set the bottle—jostling dark red, nearly black, on the inside—into Tallant’s lap, but kept her eyes on the road, not wishing for them to crash because her eyes were off the road because she wanted to see his questioning look. The way his injuries affected his facial reactions were priceless.  
  
The much older supernatural picked the bottle up to examine it, crossing his legs—one knee over another, one ankle doing the same, rather like his mother—and reading/translating the red print of the Russian on the blue paper pasted on the glass bottle. The Russian translated to “Impeccable Lavender, circa 1823” but as he smelled the cap that had been broken, he could tell that only half of the liquid sloshing within was the wine.  
  
“What is it?” He asked curiously, popping the cork with his thumb and pointer in the motion of signing “found” in English sign language.   
  
“I think you’re gonna like it,” Delia answered mysteriously, stopping the vehicle abruptly as a shepherd and his big black and white Border Collie lead a flock of about twenty-something dark, coal colored sheep across the bridge both the supernaturals and the civilian farmer needed to cross to get to that small farming town about three hundred miles from Montreal that they would get to in about five hours. Tallant watched twin white lambs gander after their mother and out of the way of Delia’s pressing of the gas pedal before continuing on the road; the vampire took out one of the crystal vodka glasses they kept in the glove box, poured himself one about half-full.  
  
Downing it in one go, despite the fact that the mere act of moving his head in a backward motion made him supremely uncomfortable, the delightful tang of good late Victorian wine met his tongue and tickled the tastebuds delightfully. But, that was not what pleased him as Delia continued down the path and the real flavoring of the blend set fire to his eyes—turning them sort of like the bloodlust red of Damian, but with multi-functional dots and spots of his natural eye color and snaked poison green—and a wicked grin along his mouth; his teeth reached downwards at his radiating glee, but did not prick his tongue or lips.

* * *

The room they finally were brought to was about as tall and wide as the high school gym the Wayne family had contributed to for inter-city troubled youth. The colors on the carpets just before the cement, tile and sort-of wood flooring made especially for the actual factual bowling area gave off the feeling of being made up by the actresses of noir. All was Bawdy Rouge, Alcove Black and Full Moon White, save for the yellow lighting that showed off the lanes for the spinning balls and knock-around pins, the electric screens above each lane that kept score—two separate ones of which showcased the names of the teams playing, each with four names, ‘ ** _Blue Jays’_** and ‘ ** _Sparrows_** ’—and the rolling balls themselves, all colored differently, brilliantly and (to Damian especially) horrendously painted.  
  
Near the wall on the far side was a tiny little bar with a familiar barman behind it—Tygrus, of all people or large feline lycanthropes and one of Selina’s only real friends—serving shot glasses and beer pitchers to the gathered family of Wayne, some of the people from Damian and Terry’s therapy groups and (wonder of wonders) the sovereign Quinn, looking over the games in an almost suspicious manner.  
  
Occupied with the sight of Selina talking with the blonde and radiant looking Harley Quinn—a larger, prettier and less spotted version of Deidre and Delia—neither of the brothers were prepared for the impact of a small, lithe body colliding with them, one arm wrapping around Damian’s neck and another around Terry’s arm.  
  
“Well, it certainly took you guys forever to get down here,” Helena smirked, removing Damian’s coat to hang it on one of the pegs attached to the wall near the door, just above some untidy rows of variously sized shoes—a pair of which Damian noted (absently and just after he shut his mouth to keep from yelling at his sister about wrinkling his coat, brand new, yes it was) to be their father’s sitting perfectly next to Selina’s five inch heeled Prada.  
  
Terry removed his own coat, revealing his formfitting brown button up with light brown cuffs all could no longer see because he had rolled them up earlier when told of this engagement they would all have to lighten their moods and cease this torrential feeling of misery that had taken over their lives at not knowing where the monsters no longer among them had disappeared to after escaping to Canada. He hooked it to the wall next to Damian’s and, though Helena was taking Damian’s shoes herself—him screaming that this was immature, pointless, idiotic—just slipped his own shoes from his feet, nicely lining them beside the Egyptian slippers he had seen Dusan wear more times than he could count. Terry’s cop shoes—Burgen’s loafers that went well with his thick, dry socks many hookers had commented on arrest was a big turnoff when they weren’t cuffed and stretched all the way to his knees like a school girl—looked like Dusan’s slippers’ older, butch boyfriends.   
  
The thought earned a smile as he approached his family sitting at the tables pressed to the walls to say hi; his feet slid against the carpet very nicely.   
  
Bruce noticed him first and pulled up a seat for his youngest son, the seat furthest from contact with Tamara and Beryl—the two ladies engaged in whispering things in each others’ ears, Tamara once and a while slipping her tongue along Beryl’s cartilage, which made Terry feel happy for them way deep down under the part of him that was still mildly freaked out by the sight of any romantic contact that reminded him of his own personal Hell some time ago—as well as asked Tygrus for a Royal Smile Cocktail (with one ounce of Blue Whale blood rather than apple brandy).  
  
Terry took his seat and nodded a thanks to his father, looking off to the side to find Damian with Helena holding his right leg in the air—the elder brother spitting Arabian profanities—in an attempt to remove his other shoe. From his seat, Terry could also see the two teams in the middle of bowling; Dick out on the floor with teammates (Terry supposed, since they were all behind him, sitting down until called to the floor and drinking various other drinks, eating those tiny little bowls of Pistachios and peanuts the bar up front offered) Melanie, Deidre and Tim cheering as the vamp bowled a strike, with Jason in the other lane, was just throwing his deep, bloody red ball downwards towards the pins set to be collided with. Jason’s teammates—well, the two of them as Terry was fairly certain Helena was the third and was bothering Damian just until her turn came up—were Ghoul drinking, probably, a light beer and Dusan wearing still rather proper white slacks and a blue button-up, looking uncertain as to exactly why he was doing this when he’d never bowled—to anyone’s knowledge—in his life.  
  
His drink set down beside him, Terry looked at Bruce with his light blue eyes not quite meeting his as Bruce was looking at Selina, but Terry still knew he was paying attention to anything he had to say; his big hand was spinning a sword shaped swizzle stick in his ice cube lacking Black Maria (with Texas Steer blood rather than the two ounces of rum).  
  
“Hey, dad,” Terry greeted pleasantly enough, if not a little hesitantly, eyes no longer looking at Bruce, but near the table legs to find Ace at Selina’s feet, the two large hyenas taking a gander at him from either side of Miss Quinn as she—apparently, though discreetly—kept track of what Selina was speaking with her about, but kept glaring over at Dick when he helped Deidre properly align herself with the little arrows painted on the floor to give proper direction for the bowler to hit a high score, his big hands on her skinny, almost-like-a-twelve-year-old-boy’s hips, “How’s work going today?”  
  
Bruce grumbled lowly in his throat, throwing back his own drink so it was near half empty before he answered his youngest, eyes going back to his face when the burn of the blood in his drink worked its way into his lungs like heavy tobacco, “I wouldn’t know. Your stepmother dragged me in here just after Alfred woke me up. I haven’t been into work—but I will be after she’s done watching Helena win out over Jason and her own team. She made a bet with Harley that if Helena came out with the best score, Harley has to contribute to that shelter program Selina’s throwing next week at the pound. But if Helena doesn’t get over a hundred points, Selina has to contribute more to this…establishment Selina, Harley and Miss Isley own jointly. As it stands, Selina hasn’t been very involved with her portion of the place upstairs—the bar hasn’t been doing well because of the limited selection of drinks. I’m praying Helena wins so I don’t have to deal with the immortal blonde calling Selina over what to name bourbon on the rocks with albino leopard blood chaser.”  
  
“We can hear you, darling,” Selina grinned from her spot, not turning to look at her husband, but expertly kicking him hard from under the table.  
  
“That was kind of the point, sweet heart,” Bruce ground out, ignoring the all-knowing/very used to this sort of thing grin on Terry’s face as the young man removed himself from the ‘adults table’ to join Damian over in the lanes to pick out their own bowling balls. He had finished his drink and didn’t want to be in the firing range when Bruce and Selina started making out after she would most probably—it had happened before, by god—kick him in the groin.

* * *

_“Is this Terry’s blood?” Tallant asked, taking another drink and savoring it even more than the first throw-back._  
  
Delia smiled, turning right as they came to a road curving into a deep gorge, river at the bottom, road skittishly placed beside some rather useless fence lining meant to keep automobiles from crashing down into the water to certain death.   
  
“Of course it is. Whatever else would I give you after you’ve been in such an awful way since Gotham?”  
  
A small dribble of the blood and wine coasted over Tallant’s bottom lip as he removed the bottle from his mouth, his tongue collecting it carefully and sweetly, his eyes tempted to roll into the back of his head, “Where’d you get it?”  
  
She was still smiling and tapped her boney, monkey slipper clad left foot in time with the song playing from the radio, absently flicking some of her blonde hair out of her line of vision, “Hm, while you were getting the truck, I popped into the hospital he was staying at and made a drop into the chemical testing room. I knew that they’d draw blood to make sure you didn’t give him Syphilis or Chlamydia or something melodramatic like that, and, wonder of wonders, it was freshly drawn. Two pints I managed to snatch. One’s in that bottle,” she paused, as she had to lean harder into the wheel so it would turn properly and not slicker out on the ice into the frozen over water far below that would gladly trap anyone that fell and broke through, “And the other I saved for when we get into town and rent a hotel. You can have it perfectly untainted while I go out and get us a…proper dinner.”  
  
Clicking his fingers over the glass, Tallant waited until they made it over the ridge and further toward civilization until he rather unilaterally decided to say something quite out of his own character and out of his own reasoning that he had lived by the past, oh, ten years. With one smooth movement, as their truck became shrouded behind some trees that were part of a short reaching, clipped forest that the map Delia was using as a guide said stood five miles before they reached town, Tallant reached over and turned the wheel onto a side road that the map said lead down to a small grove. She looked curiously at him, but continued on the route, despite the fact that the grove was basically just a cul-de-sac with flashy red, yellow and white tipped roses that were especially bread to resist the chill and freeze of winter.

* * *

“Three hundred, twenty-seven points to five hundred, fifty-three points. Spoils go to ‘ ** _The Bluejays’_** , thank you, ladies and gentlemen!”  
  
As Dick raised his arms above his head like the a kicker that had just won the world series for soccer, Helena and Jason rolled their eyes and took off from the bowling area to skip and trudge over to the adults’ table to pester Bruce and Selina and—maybe, though unlikely as neither of them were particularly doing so since they had only met her a couple times before—Harley. Tim clapped his brother over the back of his head, spouting off the fact that humility was a good practice to follow after a win; the shorter brother—a lawyer vamp, black sheep of this family, really—then tugged on Dick’s ear and started dragging him over to the bar where they would probably sit, drink and talk with Tamara and Beryl. Melanie and Ghoul started re-writing up the scoreboard for re-assignment of teams: ‘ ** _The Mansion of Alnath’_** , with Terry heading as captain (much to chagrin) and Deidre and Dusan running up; ‘ ** _The Mansion of Alchil’_** which graciously had Damian heading as captain (oh, someone was going to die from this) and stood with Melanie and Ghoul as his followers.  
  
Melanie and Ghoul would keep the meaning of the team names to themselves, but agreed that Horns of Aries and Crown of Scorpio—both places and houses that lodged symbols in angelic zodiacs—were rather fitting for the occasion.  
  
Terry powdered his hands with the white chalk stuff that came in little bowls built into the sitting area benches as well as the wall that housed the hundred-something bowling balls, and grinned at Damian doing to same thing—still very uncomfortable in the fact that (worse than wearing previously worn, disinfectant sprayed doubly colored shoes) he was not wearing shoes or socks. Terry was pretty sure that Dami would have been comfortable if he could have worn socks, but Helena assured the older vamp that this was a private area and everything was very clean. Terry grinned as Damian followed his little brother onto the floor and they each picked up their balls at the same time.  
  
Terry’s ball was Marble See-Through Red with black flecks painted to make them look like bats. Damian’s ball was much heavier than necessary and simply Pitch Black that matched his hair color.

* * *

_A special treat that only comes when Tallant is feeling very light and generous. Leather straps binding him to a pair of trees that stretched him spread-eagled, completely naked. His body scorched hot to the touch and his penis stood erect; Terry’s full and only blood held greedily in a just a mouthful in his stomach, cocaine about to enter his system not as a stimulant, but as a sedative._  
  
Delia sat on a stool that allowed her head to be level with his erection, her body only clothed in a spaghetti-strap white top, a pair of denim short-shorts, and her monkey slippers.  
  
Very direct and not at all taking it slow—why should she? After all, he had given her permission to do what she wanted after such a great gift—she lathed her tongue over his swollen hardness twice and uncorked the bottle of cocaine she had bought in Russian before they had visited Gotham. She removed her mouth from the older supernatural and peppered his slit and then the glands with the white—one hundred percent pure, might she add—drug. She did not delight in any form of sexual activity from him, just as he did not enjoy having any arduous activity with her. Applying her oral appendages to his genitalia had once made her vomit up a delicious dinner the third time they’d met, but….  
  
There was nothing like watching him lose control—shake the bottle, pop the cork—before her when he had just had something he really wanted.  
  
After applying the drug one more time—this time with her much sharper pointer fingernail—to his slit, rubbing it in with her thumb afterwards, she removed her pocketknife and got off of the stool, moving behind him, very slowly.

* * *

Both balls, quickly and with great force—perhaps enough to have broken the pins in half if so desired—slammed into the pins at the end of the alleys, completely down the middle. Terry knocked them all down as surely as Damian did, though Terry’s pins didn’t launch forward into the gutters with a loud crash.  
  
Deidre and Dusan clapped enthusiastically for the younger Wayne, as did Melanie and Ghoul for Damian, though one set was more honest and actually paying attention as the other two were more occupied with the sight of the rest of Damian’s therapy group—the now hanging on each other and apparently drunk, Tamara and Beryl—giving them a small goodbye and left with Dick and Tim behind them, following simply to make sure the two ladies could get to their apartment without passing out in the street. Jason and Helena followed swiftly after them, with Jason covertly stealing Damian’s shoes with his back turned and Helena covering his retreat with a wicked grin.  
  
“Hey,” Terry called over, walking to the door as Harley left silently with her hyenas—giving one last look at Deidre; Terry was fairly certain the regal blonde woman was glaring at Dusan sitting with her tomboyish looking daughter and chatting about nothing—and was being followed by Selina and Bruce, “Where are you guys heading off to in such a hurry?”  
  
Bruce allowed Selina to proceed up the stairs, silently telling her he’d follow after in a moment, “Barbara and Mr. Fox just called to pull us into work before enjoyment overtakes our tiny little lives. You two stay here with your groups, have fun, do whatever.”  
  
Terry frowned a little at the flat, uncomfortable tone, “Gee, don’t sound so enthusiastic to stay, dad.”  
  
Bruce frowned as well, putting on his coat with a sweeping motion, shoes being slipped on just as easily, not at all seeming too concerned with his son’s tone, “Terry…”  
  
“It’s fine father.”  
  
Terry flinched a little as a tan hand settled onto his shoulder and a presence that had been hovering silently within fifty feet of him since his second attack by Tallant, but he didn’t shrug off Damian’s hand. It wasn’t exactly comfortable for the younger man, but it was more comfortable than any other physical contact he’d had recently in the last few months (including from Dick, his parents, basically all of his other siblings, short of Helena, maybe).  
  
Bruce looked a little more relieved as he was now being glared at by Damian—a sort of irritation he had grown used to a long time ago—rather than Terry, “Good to know you understand. Ace wants to stay, so I hope you’ll return him after this….thing….is over with. Unless you want to keep him at your apartment for a while?”  
  
“We’ll see. Have a good day, Father.”

* * *

_Slits the length of about five inches were cut into common white collar drug using areas. Delia used her pocket knife at Tallant’s elbows, the clip of both ankles, between his toes and, very carefully—like a surgeon she had once worshipped before she knew better—she cut a small hole through his tongue where some people put tongue piercings._  
  
When she was done adding the cuts, she uncorked another bottle of cocaine—this one with the adage of some Special E—and started peppering the drugs into the blood that seeped from his wounds to put it directly into his bloodstream.  
  
All of this, added to the cold from winter and the fact that he was bound and naked, left Tallant writhing sensually against his restraints. His eye were slowly turning the chalky, glowing white that only came from his most supreme and lethal form, his teeth were about the same length of a lion’s, and Delia had to add more restraints to his wrists as well as his legs before she would add on the final touch and allow him to release. As well, she would need to add a muzzle that coned forward down his throat and was rather special for the last step.  
  
When the last leather strap that kept his arms, legs and mouth in place were tightened and set, Delia took her seat back on her stool and just…absorbed the moment.  
  
These kind of moments only really happened when Tallant felt especially guilty about the targets they chose and the victims they killed. He never asked for this with people who deserved it—fellow rapists, murderers, some molesters; all of which he picked out—but sometimes when Delia pushed him far—with small children, pregnant women and men of God, etc—he would ask her to do this sort of thing with a straight razor and liquid silver. This, on the other hand, was special. After he finished and was spent, he would do something similar—though, decidedly different—to her and they would sleep much better that night. But, she would just look at him for the moment and not think about that.

* * *

“I know he means well, but does he have to be so cold?”  
  
Damian sighed, thanking Tygus for the raw and, more importantly, intoxicating Welsh Corgi blood on the rocks, and followed after Terry back to the alley. His blue eyes observed Melanie bowl a Straight, while Deidre caused Dusan to blush as she did a rather similar maneuver Dick had done earlier, by laying her tiny hands on his hips to help him guide his ball in. The elder Wayne patted Terry half-heartedly on the back, but grinned when Terry shook him off that time, taking a strong swig from the bottle of Blue Whale blood Tygrus had given him to avoid the young man getting even more depressed.  
  
“That’s the way he is little brother. I thought you learned that when you were still a toddler.”  
  
Terry grumbled, taking his seat back on the uncomfortable, squeaking plastic bench their teams shared, Damian taking his seat beside him, hooking a large arm behind Terry, hand coming to clasp the bench at Terry’s shoulder.

* * *

_Tallant whined pitifully, pupils long since gone as his erection was harder than rock at that point and he wanted to stroke it so badly, and then just rip himself free so he could tear out Delia’s throat. Terry’s blood in his stomach had dried at and run its course; the cocaine now making him agitated—even more so with Delia still just sitting there, once and a while pressing her fingernail sharply into his opening and his slit._  
  
His pale eyes watched her sharply as she finally got off of the stool and went to the truck. She disappeared for a moment, but when she came out, it was with the rest of Terry’s whole blood in a tiny, hotel mini-bar sized bottle. Drool escaped from the opening in his facemask and fell onto his erection, sending a sharp spike up his back.  
  
Removing her shorts, but not her top, Delia revealed her own little erection—her penis was not quite as large as his, not quite as thick around, but it did the job—and unscrewed the small bottle, allowing some of the red liquid onto the palm of her hand.   
  
Slowly and as though this was part of some procedure to the start of something new, rather than just a rarely played game, the little demon put her bloody palm to her own erection and smeared the blood up and down her length; her fingernail cuffing her own tiny slit and pressing the blood into that as well. But she didn’t screw back on the cap to the bottle.   
  
Making sure that her penis was completely red, Delia pressed her still slightly red hand to Tallant’s stomach and wiped her palm, her fingers, her wrist on his tan skin until all the blood was off. It sent such a powerful surge through Tallant that the restraint holding his right hand almost broke and frayed completely off, but it wasn’t enough to let his have freedom of movement. She blinked, smirking at his desperation, but continued…

* * *

“Do you suppose,” Terry questioned, quiet and discreet so the others wouldn’t hear, “That things will ever go back to normal?”  
  
Damian took another drink and answered just as quietly, “You mean, will he ever stop treating you like a victim?”  
  
“Yeah, I guess.”  
  
“Probably not. But, at least he’s not hugging you like Dick does so often.”  
  
Terry was torn between a smile and chastisement of his older brother, but…no, it was just Damian saying what was probably true.   
  
Sighing and taking a drink as both of their teams hit a strike at once—neither brother much caring about the game, but willing to engage in it—Terry leaned into Damian and pretended not to notice when his big brother’s hand came up to gently rub his shoulder from behind the bench.  
  
“Yeah, there’s nothing “worse” than being hugged too often by Dick.”  
  
“Exactly,” Damian grinned, clinking his drink to Terry’s and ignoring the fuzzy feeling of a migraine coming on as Ace started barking at Tygrus behind them and the rest of the group acting like children when Dusan finally managed a strike of his own. Terry clinked back and drank, hiding his own smile with the bottle of blood to his lips.

* * *

_The tiny blood bottle inserted perfectly in the break of leather that opened into Tallant’s mouth, onto his tongue. The blood drained swiftly out in little breaks from the bottle and down Tallant’s throat, with him gladly and expertly catching every last drop._  
  
With the blood finally in him and none of it left in the bottle, Delia kept the glass bottle in the mask’s opening, and used both hands—she needed both of them, or it would never work—to position Tallant’s erection much lower until it pressed against her blood encrusted and painted dick.  
  
Writhing even more harshly against his bindings, Tallant’s glowing white eyes contracted into pure midnight, soulless black for a blink…and then came orgasm.  
  
Delia paid no attention to his face or his arms or anything else but Tallant’s erection as he began pouring white from his painfully tender slit. She moved it in circles around her own erection like it was icing on an odd cake fixture—herself counting to twenty when she knew he would run out of juice.  
  
When he exercised the whole of his orgasm and his eyes and teeth tinted and moved back to their more natural state, she began to remove his mask first, then his legs. She put the stool behind him before she unbound his arms and he dropped pliant and almost jell-o kneed onto the wooden seat. He stood still as she palmed his wristed and moved them to her hips to keep him steady, and once she was sure that he wouldn’t fall backwards from exhaustion, she used both of her hands to hold his head still and rocked her hips forward to press her own erection into his mouth.  
  
This was the main point of the exercise, the entire point, and he was back into action—eyes wide and back rigid straight—as the taste of himself and his little brother entered his system. She didn’t really have a taste, a flavor, so all he was experiencing was himself in white and his brother in red.  
  
It wasn’t as good as the real thing, but damned if he didn’t enjoy it.


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [This is the way of all things. Or, how they should be.]
> 
> Family takes care of family, no matter how some people within it act. Or, the kids are doing better and a lot of people are quite angry at Tallant and Delia.

_-:-_  
…Oh, that single cello…  
-Philadelphia.

 

* * *

_[ **This is the way of all things**_ **. Or, how they should be**.]  
  
It was not the elder’s way to rouse to his waking hours to a body clutched to his chest by his own steady (l _arge, pale, no dirt or grit under the fingernails, no residue of previous activities; clean as a cat’s_ ) hands, arms tucked around a skinny, but well-defined torso. Both bodies, his and the other’s, were the same temperature and that was always why it surprised Damian Wayne that he was never bothered by added heat or heat stolen away.  
  
The clothes he wore from the day before felt crinkled against his skin, and he knew Helena was going to make remarks about it when he and the other beside him went in for work later, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. It was a little like when the two were much younger, less damaged and more free to do as they pleased ( _so long as they didn’t break anything that would alert their father to annoyance, or do anything even remotely probable to get Alfred—faithful servant/pseudo-grandfather—to raise a brow at them_ ).  
  
The apartment was new, had been for a while now (with days stretching into months that could be appreciated in comfort) and Damian still couldn’t get used to having to be completely and utterly invited inside before he could step over the threshold and make himself comfortable in their jointly owned apartment; that strange lamp given to Terry by other twice-damaged persons being the cause of Damian’s often having to stay in the place for long or short periods of time because he didn’t want to have to deal with coming back in when he had to pick his little brother up before work, or just get his keys and had to do the little dance all over again. It was hanging in the middle of the apartment ( _the exact center; to “pick up and trace the negative forces it was to serve against” as Dusan and Deidre had explained_ ) from a little peg that looked like an Earthworm.  
  
Damian had touched the thing once ( _its tall silver metal etched with the symbols that he may once have known before he’d ignored his mother’s teachings in favor of his father’s, energies he couldn’t explain giving the inside of the lantern the look of a heart’s skin fresh out of a healthy body and finally, of all of that, the thing that would forever prevent the enemy of both of them from coming back: one strip of Damian Wayne’s twin brother’s skin that their uncle Dusan had wedged in his fingernails after he’d attacked the darker of the two and later had put away after Dusan had been dragged from freezing cold water, in case it was useful_ ) and the energy would have burnt his hand if Terry hadn’t snatched it away.  
  
Taking in a deep breath of afternoon air, Damian put his head back down on the pillow, his little brother only just starting to come out of REM sleep; eyes weaving under lids in trying to remove himself from whatever dream he was in.  
  
Damian closed his eyes with a last look at the window to the bedroom where another ward had been placed by another twice-damaged friend ( _he still didn’t know what it was that the blonde had called the steel orchid tacked to every windowsill with traces of Delia-psycho-bitch’s blood inside, saying that the owner of the blood was certainly not welcome inside in any way shape or form, even after Helena had explained it seven times, eyes dilated in exasperation and ears twitching; but he knew for sure that it worked_ ), before resting again until Terry woke up. He would enjoy the few hours of peace before they had to go to a private meeting that was not (was not) therapy among their other giddy-and-in-love victims of all their first attacks; just a private get-together between the only four twice-attacked victims.

 

* * *

[ **An apartment hardly recognizable by the person who owns it on account of finally making himself available to feeling-family-friendship** …]  
  
The White Ghost still couldn’t get used to walking into his kitchen to find a vase that had been there for a year ( _tall and elegant, white and clean, water inside that was the same color of the veins traversing Dusan’s own body_ ) with new flowers every single day. He didn’t have to empty the thing of the old ones from the day previous; the new flowers simply appeared with a vibe wavering off of them in tapers of mist that tasted like shy elegance and the obscure curiosity he had grown used to.  
  
Dusan washed out the cup he’d left in the sink from the night before—milk with just a shot of hummingbird blood for flavor—and groggily dried it out with the towel he had hanging from his refrigerator’s grip ( _not white, but rather a calming ivory yellow that felt like a carpet and looked to have a purple stitched elephant the size of his elongated canine in each corner_ ). The water droplets left over were no bother to him as he got some of the tea that had dripped from his instant coffee-maker and then opened a cupboard to look for a suitable blood to mix in with the Earl Gray.  
  
( _Hair spun gold, now and often wavering in the air like a little banner; eyes like the secrets a cat keeps, watching him carefully for fault lines that had not previously existed; the scent of fallen leaves on her person when he could not help but break down in memory and needed to be held by a friend_.)  
  
He picked up a corked bottle of freshly drawn pregnant otter’s blood and dropped about three spoonful’s worth of it into his drink, left hand fiddling with the blue sash that held his cornflower blue housecoat with the white Arabian designs along the hem together as his one good eye swerved to the flowers he would be stuck with for the day. A simple cluster of four big Purple Daisies and three Gillyflowers much too big for the sparse magic that made them appear.  
  
He really didn’t know what he was supposed to buy when he went out to market before the other three got to his apartment and then they went out around the city to bitch about life’s problems. Maybe he should call someone up first…

 

* * *

[ **Among snow drenched mountains that were dotted red and purple where rare flowers were allowed in and of themselves to grow amongst the frost, the sound of wind against the frozen water giving off the impression of a thousand screaming bats and sheep** …]  
  
 _Not having any people to bother her when so far away from civilization gave quite the perspective of freedom when one was alone in the wilderness. Not having to wear clothes was a big part of that (_ **her little breasts tight at the ends much more than usual, and her flaccid penis turning purple at the end like an albino rabbit’s in a cage** ) _and, as a certain intersex individual walked up the side of the mountain, a dead mountain lion draped over her shoulder and dripping blood from its mouth to her tailbone and done the inside of her thighs, she considered how she would greet Tallant when she made it to their rather luxurious_ ( **she meant of course, expensive and silent and almost as cold as the snow she was walking through** ) _home with what would be their dinner_.  
  
 _‘Well, the lion will be dinner,’ Delia thought with a most tilted and malevolent smile as she leaned into a rocky incline and made further into the body of the mountain as if it were a secret tower in the mists of some novel revolving around Hobbits, Dwarves and Elves, sharp teeth cutting into her own tongue in approval of her own thoughts, ‘But he gets to choose the sweet finish…’_

 

* * *

[ **Heavy rain washed out the streets to give the appearance of cleanliness as many people walked about; the human and the not-so looking about bodegas and stalls for foods and drinks and confections of their favor** …]  
  
Under the bridge that hung over the market, all moss and wire and muck and mire with traces and sights of little bat-chickens roosting on the fringes of the vines ( _in mated groups of twos and threes; the males with their adorable heads like Fruit bats cleaning the female’s black feathered wings and leather paws after a long day sitting upon their egg clusters_ ), a blonde lady stood looking over a bodega cart filled with Dandelion Berries and Shining Violet Nuts and the like. The merchant across from her ( _a black slug with the face of a grasshopper and body twice the length and size of a walrus_ ) fiddled its mantis arms nervously—and standing across from the remaining daughter of the Outskirts’ Queen, who wouldn’t fidget?—and waited patiently for her to choose something.  
  
Really, she didn’t want to make the poor creature nervous, but she had a feeling that morning when she woke up that even after she got to Mr. Dusan’s home to wait for Terry and Mr. Damian, it would be for naught and only two would leave the apartment when another two called in to cancel. She didn’t want to waste her money on food that would only spoil.  
  
Light blue eyes blinked twice as the phone in her purse ( _a configuration of two bells on a metal stick with electronics running through it like in the old days of science_ ) rang out ‘Ode to Joy’ and spooked the merchant.  
  
( _Considerate eyes staring up at a ceiling in mild desperation of circumstances—one red, one blind. White, white, white skin sweating from the previous moments in a warm shower to remove the feeling of annoyance from the mind. No want to call her unless there was little idea of what to do before a designated hour_.)  
  
Left hand turning on the phone and right hand fiddling with some of the Hazel Wigs, Deidre spoke evenly into the receiver, “Hello, Mr. Dusan. Is there something I can help you with?”

 

* * *

[ **The family photos lining the walls of the police station’s one spare room that was adjacent to the morgue gave the office the feeling of unsettled peace; but not unkind** …]  
  
The figure of the King of Gotham stood over the photos of all of the sites that his sons had been attacked and held against their will; the cold air of his private holding area soothing his temper down to what a candle might feel like after boiling wax had gained some of its solidity and strength. A picture of a carefully broken window had been keeping his attention for over an hour, but he didn’t know why. It was beautiful, of course, as all of the places of the attacks had been, but this one spoke volumes in the back part of his mind where he kept certain secrets and histories of his ever-so-long life.  
  
It would be a time still until he could pick the right reasons for the sudden jolt he’d felt while looking at the window, but he was immortal—he had more time than most.  
  
The door to his office opened for nothing more than the sound of the rusted pins at its side squeaking like a crow’s broken neck, but no longer. And suddenly, before him, on a saucer in the hand with a pair of dissolvable mints that had been made with Tamarin ape blood, was a little China cup filled with obsidian black tea ( _three bitterroot sugars in the bottom_ ). He’s eyes flashed deep red at the smell of the blood, but went back to his own somber blue as he looked upon his daughter Helena, her Felidae smile strained as it often was around him, and her little rear sitting on the photos he hadn’t been paying as much attention to.  
  
“Mother said you hadn’t eaten when you left home, and Babs said you hadn’t come up since you got here,” she stated uncaringly, allowing his much larger hands to take hold of the saucer, seemingly grateful to her as he took a sip of the offering, though she knew he’d never say so out loud.  
  
“Selina and Barbara will be getting their ears chewed off when I get back to work later.”  
  
“Father,” Helena hiss-chuckled, palms clutching the side of the desk and legs stretching out to show off their slender glory to the creatures that lived in the morgue’s walls ( _centipedes that smoked long-pipes, spiders that could fit in a millimeter sized crevice and then be offer with a message to deliver with gliding steps as long as a canoe as it suited them, rats as black as her father’s hair with rubies for eyes that went away swiftly when called upon by Hartley across the street in his law offices_ ), much to her parent’s chagrin, “If you can’t be nice, I’m going to stop coming down here to feed you.”  
  
“No you won’t, you’ve threatened me with that too many times.”  
  
His daughter’s face scrunched up along the ridge of her nose, giving her a far more feral look as she gave a huff of air and raised her hand.  
  
Clicking her especially sharp nails, giving off an echo a bit like when a bird of prey drops a turtle onto a boulder to crack open the shell and devour the animal’s insides, Helena vanished into another echo of reality where she would reemerge upstairs ( _Bruce knew, like he knew most things_ ) to complain about his horrendous manners to Dick and then Tim. Her tail would doubtlessly hit the floor so hard it would take up dust into the air and make Tim sneeze.  
  
Bruce picked up one of the blooded mints and sucked on it twice before allowing it to settle into the back of his throat where it touched both his esophagus and his uvula. It allowed the blood particles to trickle down slowly with his saliva as he went back to focusing on the picture of the window. He eyes, because of the taste of both the blood and the mint and the tea, left his eyes reverting every few moments from red to white to black and back.  
  
If he was a lesser vampire, he might have been annoyed by the shift in vision—for him, it might help with his problems.

 

* * *

[ **Heat waves from the walls and touches the cold body looking over the half-finished cocoon of scented plants and skin that felt like the inside of a human esophagus; knives glint in candlelight to snip out the unimportant bits** …]  
  
I _t occurred to Tallant that the woman laying carefully and perfectly to the left side of flesh and skin cocoon had once been beautiful before his partner had gotten her hands on her in one of the urine scented alley’s of the closest village near to their hideout. Perhaps the young woman (_ **previously known, in accordance to the frayed and old leather wallet that had been on her person at the time of Delia’s attack, as Laira Omoto, age twenty-two, organ donor—he had privately chuckled over that last bit when he had put some of her removed organs into jelly and pickle jars to be dried and ground up later for protein** ) _had been the type to hate the feeling of shag carpeting under her bare feet, drank health shakes made of chocolate bean debris and pear wedges, and woke up with the dawn as her birthright as a noble banshee of the north; but even if that was true, he could not bring himself to feel sorry as his freshly sharpened Quard knife made a small design in the crook of her ankle, causing dead blood to dribble into the red tea leaves surrounding her form._  
  
 _The black polish he’d painted the other morning on his right hand’s fingernails glinted back his body’s reflection in the candlelight of the very warm dungeon-esque room; showing off his upper torso, his ribs, his professionally flaccid penis, his pointy ears, his hair tied back in an almost painful tail to keep his black tresses from falling over his shoulder and into the woman’s open abdominal cavity that was still too fresh with a cup of fermented barley water mixed with black opiates and crushed Rattlesnake Almonds for his liking. His hands were still shaking a little from the excitement of her smell from the hour previous when she’d died for his liking._  
  
 _Letting go of an intake of air he’d been holding for about ten minutes of frustration at himself and his hands, Tallant was glad to set his knife back on the cart near his hip, spinning around to hear the front door open and close against the snow trying to get in from the outside. He and his partner would have dinner—consult on what to do for dessert—and then, hopefully after things had died down to alleviate his boredom he would be able to work again._  
  
 _It was his preference to work on two bodies at a time rather than one. He knew that and had been fooling himself to think he could bypass his own quirks that day._  
  
 _Taking his Cambodian Red robe from the peg hanging above the archway nearest him ( **a large slab of auburn that had been carved by his grandfather’s clever and most loyal servant Ubu to bare the appearance of a swan’s skeletal neck, head and beak—going so far as to hold empty eye sockets that had been fitted by Ra’s al Ghul himself with white blanched crystals he’d brought back as a gift from Lord Hades in the Underworld** ), Tallant made his way for the staircase, nose taking up traces of the dead meal Delia had chosen for them._

 

* * *

[ **It is difficult to get the things we want, but not impossible** …]  
  
The floorboards beneath the bed began to lurch and stir against themselves. Some of the rats that had been requested by the two brothers to wake them up on days when they had important meetings began to do their duty of pressing their heads to the undersides of the wood, banging their shoulders up into them as hard as they could; nails with little silver and bronze rings fashioned to their undersides dinged in a most abhorrent sounding racket that go the smaller of the two vampires in the shared bed to give a little jolt and would have made him fall from the bed if the other hadn’t had an arm encircled around him.  
  
“Oh, you bloody…” Terry grumbled, hand wandering the underside of his bed to touch base with one of the fine, custom-made leather boots he had shoved into place the day before when he had dropped into bed with Damian not far behind him; picking it up, and without looking, he tossed it at the floorboard in the far right corner of the room that had a bell in the configuration of a white swallow that knocked against the side of the wall when hit with the shoe. It rang seven irritable times and all the rats below stopped their assault on the floorboards, disappearing back to where they came from to await orders from their master Hartley at their home.  
  
Terry coughed internal debris from the inside of his throat and heaved himself back onto the bed. When he made to lean back into his pillows, he was to instead find a strong arm flung across the softness that the younger brother had hoped for, Damian with eyes wide open looking amused at the face the other made, “No, we have a meeting to get to, if you recall.”  
  
“I don’t want to,” Terry groaned, pressing one palm into the hollow of his eye, trying to weed out the salty grain that the previously sleeping often possessed, “It was supposed to be our day-off, anyway.”  
  
“Then why did you schedule it?” The elder brother questioned, sitting up as well to make his way to their shared lavatory, that obnoxious tenderness that came to the vampire (and human, and undead, and werewolf, etc.) underside causing him to walk swiftly on the balls of his feet so his legs do knock anywhere against each other. Upon moving into the bathroom ( _black and white tiled, the clothe shower curtain swaying from the air coming about from the open window a kind of plaid yellow and tan that Terry had chosen simply to throw Damian off every morning_ ), Damian didn’t bother to shut the door and Terry blearily looked towards the other to answer ( _never minding the glance he got of Damian’s penis being held in the movement of relieving himself; it was nothing new to him_ ) while he removed himself from the bed to remove his own pants and look for another pair.  
  
“Because, we haven’t talked to them in three days and haven’t gone to see either of them in seven. They might think we’re removing ourselves from their lives and I don’t want them to think that.”  
  
“You sound like a woman,” Damian smirked, pressing down on the handle of the toilet, the water sucking down the vampire’s own quite warm fluid as he removed himself from the room, not bothering to tuck himself back into his boxers as he needed to change both underwear and pants if they were going out.  
  
Damian being naked around Terry was not a big thing since they’d moved in together. Rather, it gave the younger the opportunity to check out Damian’s differences from Tallant in both physical and spiritual form.  
  
( _Where Terry recalled in fact of Tallant being both broad and as tall in figure as Damian, Damian held a more quiet air about him when he had to—a kind of soul and demeanor like an Arabian horse that only sprang about for freedom and challenge. Tallant was more of the piece of cold art carved out of a slab of white marble to be polished and admired, but far be it for anyone to touch him in the event that they hit a sore spot and crumbled around them in an attempt to crush them under his cold, dead-feeling weight_.)  
  
“I do not; I just sound considerate,” Terry defended, removing his shirt from his own figure to pull out a simple silk long sleeve shirt made of Catacomb Spider silk ( _a gift from Helena after she’d gone on a business trip to Nanda Parbat for their father to bring back an assassin that had been hiding in their caves_ ) and sniffed it. It still smelled like the orange pekoe cologne he’d used under duress of Dick’s hugs, though, so he put it back in the closet and looked about for a cleaner shirt; his skinny, almost feminine thighs and knees knocking together when he nearly tripped over a stray basketball in the middle of the floor that would have made him fall to the floor if Damian hadn’t caught his shoulder, and looped his leg under the younger like a bridge. The contact of skin to skin would have cause a little internal rhythm between the two, but they were in a hurry and Damian ended up knocking Terry onto the bed as the elder made for the drawers that had his underwear folded and neat.  
  
“Sure, whatever you say, Pretty Lady.”  
  
Picking up the pillow the both of them had (unknowingly) shared during the night, Terry felt very satisfied when it hit Damian’s head and made him drop the pair of checkerboard boxers he’d picked out onto the floor. He gave a little shriek when Damian retaliated by picking the pillow up and body slamming his little brother—the pillow softening the impact of chest to chest. It didn’t hurt ( _Damian wouldn’t want it to hurt, even to get back at his little brother_ ).

 

* * *

[ **Old curiosity might suit a purpose, even if it might be drawn out for a time** …]  
  
Silica fine blue eyes looked out upon the grounds of the indoor garden that had been in the works for about ten years as the workers down below on the ground floor were finally setting about to put in old Bay-Pig Brushbottle trees that gave the uncanny resemblance to sows when they were mature enough to give fruit  
  
“My lady?”  
  
The woman staring out of her balcony of the third floor of the onion looking domed building turned her head to glance at Cameron and Holly of the Ice and the Cat houses ( _strange young people to be sent to be in her company; but then, she was a sort of ruler to the Summerlands and having strange visitors, even in the quiet hours when she was to be alone, wasn’t so out of the ordinary_ ). She smiled a little at the flinch she got out of the Ice Elf and set down the teacup she’d been holding onto her desk; she didn’t mind that it settled like an egg in the nest of papers she’d had lain out.  
  
“Yes?” Harley Quinn asked, gentle but not tremendously kind when interrupted from her thoughts.  
  
“Lady Selina told us to bring you word as soon as we could,” Holly Robinson ( _a little werecat that Selina had taken a fancy to not long after her Helena had been able to take care of her own self_ ) spoke up, rolling open a scroll that had been tucked under her arm ( _damaged it was, coffee stained and water logged, but with an important seal from the East_ ), “The contact from that snow city wanted to ask you some questions before he even thought of going against his master and mistress.”  
  
Harley tilted her head ( _an immortal that had once been human, brave and dependable and once in a blue moon able to take on Selina’s husband when he tried to confront that awful al Ghul demon; a pity that he was bald otherwise he might have been something worth looking at_ ) in recollection of a name on the tip of her tongue, “Ubu? That old flim-flam who idols Ra’s and his whole family? Why ever would he want to go to me with exchange for information?”  
  
“He wouldn’t,” Cameron, Icicle Jr. answered, head low, “But Lord Wayne said that if Ubu sent messages to you, it would be far less obvious than giving information directly to Lady Selina and the king himself.”  
  
“Plus, since he seems to be under the impression that Lord Dusan is being watched by you for any impropriety with your youngest, if he got caught he could say the idea was ludicrous and get away with it in front of his masters,” Holly butted in, her Corico-Pat grin set in place when Harley’s facial features dimmed into something more serious ( _the sound of the White Ghost’s name something she didn’t desire to hear as yet_ ).  
  
“Before I accept this little mission from god,” the blonde said sarcastically, thick red and white robes like a butterfly’s wings tracing the ground ( _they smelled like dust and moss to Holly and like buttered gin to Cameron, even standing ten feet away in fear of inciting her wrath_ ) as she paced from the overlooking balcony and back to the side of her desk, “I might ask why I would even be interested? What could he possibly give—could _THEY_ possibly give _me_?”  
  
( _Little known fact to the higher immortals of the plain that the two younglings before the queen knew, was that if a sleight has been committed against a more powerful family’s own by someone in that family, or from without, it is not in the interest for the head of that powerful family to seek vengeance. It goes against their most regal and better nature; something, say, more first-class supernaturals like the Wayne and Kyle clan could not understand_.)  
  
Holly scrolled further down the parchment and incited the right words that had her darker majesty’s eyes light in the focus of white, black, red and blue within the span of three seconds, “This will be followed, if all goes well and vengeance is exacted, a favor.”  
  
The spots along Harley’s back gleamed a shining white for a brief moment and she grinned, “I believe this is where I welcome myself aboard.”  
  
The clock on the far wall made of alabaster rock and steel, two arms moving that looked like one bat’s wing and one feline’s front leg, and numbers given in figures of separate continents turned and rang the hour of seven o’clock.

 

* * *

[ **One can get what they want, even when later they find out they didn’t really want it** …]  
  
Bruce Wayne in a moment of time he would later recall ( _going to bed with Selina after still looking over that picture of a broken window when his wife was talking to him about his manners_ ) with cruel intention, bit his tongue when the little unobtrusive clock on the wall clicked to the seven numeral that Helena had switched to looked like an L, and sang out the lyrics to a song he had not programmed into it, but remembered as being a part of Jason’s collection of music.  
  
‘… _Oh, I’m so happy; I’m the king of the night… But, dear me, this parachute is a knapsack_ …’  
  
He would look back on the memory with the feeling that even in trying to do right for both his blood and simple victims, something was not quite right…

**Author's Note:**

> To Rose Midnight Moonlight Black, whom I adore as a writer, in repayment for her horror Halloween fic. Since she used Damian’s clone Tallant in a setting befitting the writings of most vampire novelists like Stoker and such, I have decided to pay her back in kind. Since she mentioned she would like more of my scary fics, I am offering it up on her alter like a dead cow to a pagan deity. I hope she doesn’t mind how I put up her favorite characters like actors in a simple BBC drama…
> 
> For those that are wondering, the answer is: no. There are not going to be any OC’s what-so-ever in this fic. Technically, I’m pretty sure Helena Kyle, in RMMB’s universe, is Selina’s actual daughter she gave up for adoption, so there’s no cheating here. I don’t use OC’s, so be prepared for a long game of “Where Have I Seen This Character?”
> 
> Also, this was originally posted on FFdotNet. It came here for a friend who moved here and hasn't seen it.


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